Is playing chess useful for college application?

I really don't know. Let's hope for the best for all of us.

Here is a short list of chess players I know. If you know anyone else, please feel free to add to the list in comment.

GM Robert Hess: Yale
GM Darwin Yang: Harvard
GM Daniel Naroditsky: Stanford
IM Elected Park Zhao: MIT
IM Luke Harmon-Vellotti: UCLA (age 14, $175K scholarship, also accepted by Stanford and others)
IM Alexander Katz: MIT
IM Victor Shen: Columbia
NM Andrew Ng: Princeton
FM Alisa Melekhina: UPenn Law School
WIM Yuanling Yuan (Canada): Yale
NM Anna Matlin: Princeton
Dai Yang: MIT
Darrian Robinson: University of Chicago
Jennie Liu: Columbia
Kevin Mo: Duke
Adarsh Jayakumar: Cornell


All these players are rated above 2000. Any serious student should be able to reach that level after about 6-year tournament competitions.