can I be an IM before i die?

Yeah, the last part of my comparison was an exaggeration.

It's also not the best comparison.  Even with no formal education people intuitively understand basics like addition and ratios.

But also another reason, chess is performance.  A Master's degree is great... but like Scottrf said it's basically a time + effort (+ money) achievement.  Titles (and ratings) aren't knowledge, they're performance.  As a different poster recently said if chess was about knowledge then child prodigies wouldn't ever beat seasoned GMs.

Maybe this is the point some people miss when they believe any chess achievement is possible given enough time (?)

He used to play Xiangqi before playing chess.

Are the skills required the same? 

I would argue that almost nobody who pursues an IM title fails, either.  It's just that the regimen for attaining a Master's degree -- 12 years of study through high school, 4 years of study through college, and 2 years of grad school (all taken as more or less averages), with a number of hours per day and per year dedicated to its achievement -- is both well-structured and offers clear and attainable rewards.

It would be almost impossible for an adult of average intelligence to pursue chess as his full time occupation for 15 to 20 years without attaining at least IM status.  It's just that the number of people who bother to try is paltry, since the activity offers almost no financial reward for almost all participants, and even the world's best chess players receive rewards far below the world's bests in other fields with similarly rigorous paths of training.

It can certainly be argued that an advanced degree is little more than time + effort + money.  But the same could be argued for chess success.  Time studies, plus effort put into learning and practicing, plus money both put into tournament play and/or given up to devote oneself to pursuit = title.

So it is for almost all forms of human edeavor.

You know when you see GM success?  When kids forego regular human education and become chess robots from the time they're toddlers.  That's what it takes to be really good at anything.  Start early, work often, work hard, and keep at it.

although i am terrible at chess, as a professional french horn player i can relate to your question! All sports and Arts are suprisingly similar in terms of effort and dedication one needs to put in order to perform at the top level. 1 hour of quality goal focused training is worth more than 5 hours of unfocused " going through the motions" type of training

For example....do you rush your tactics training on the computer....seeing how many you can do in a hour...must get that rating up..guessing the move before the clock runs out...tick tock tick tock. Or do you set it up on a real board with no timer....why is that tactic so effective?...name what kind of tactic is being used?...run through the moves again and again and admire it's beauty. take all the pieces off the board....can you still visualize the tactic? now replace the pieces from memory....etc

Now do 4-5 hours of that a day on all aspects of chess and my friend the IM is yours!

best of luck

I agree with pretty much everything else you said except this.  There's a big difference between spending 10-15 years in a structured learning environment starting from age 5 and doing the same starting at age 20.

Especially when performance is involved.  If top level chess is a good example, your play starts to deteriorate around 40 even with regular practice.  If you're starting at 26, even if you had a chance, you're racing the clock.

Yeah, language is a good comparison IMO.

Anyway, the answer is that you probably can, but you probably won't, and what's more, you probably shouldn't bother given how time consuming it will be and how little you'll have to show for it when you're all said and done.

It would be almost impossible for an adult of average intelligence to pursue chess as his full time occupation for 15 to 20 years without attaining at least IM status. [...]

Well, I don't mean to be rude, but obviously you don't have the slightest idea of what you're talking about.

I hope you do eh!  I myself am working towards a title, albeit, not hard and am losing ground rating wise lol BUT, still working nonetheless.  I am 25 and once the turmoil in my life settles down I can dedicate more time to serious study.

I hope you make it man.  A good thing I do that has helped me acheive other goals is a physical calander.  I literally write down my progress(or lack thereof) and have visible proof of success. 

Good luck eh.

maybe

well thanks for your feedback...hopefully i will finish my 4 rated games this December in a tournament i plan to play..my initial rating will in all probability be in the 1300s or 1400s max..after that will have to slug it out tournament by tournament to see where it goes..ive found out that for my first 30 rated games, i will earn double the points (and also lose double) than wat i will after 30 games..i will target a rise of 50 points every year, atleast initially through 3 or 4 tournaments every year..after if i reach 2000 or so (in around 15 years), i will have a realistic idea on whether IM is up for grabs or not..

I disagree.  There's millions of people who started playing at an early age, became 1800-2200 players, then hit a wall no matter how much more they study and play. I knew someone that broke 2200 in his late teens and thought he had it made on the way to becoming an IM or GM, but he never got above 2250 after years of tournament play and he would occassionally slip back to the mid 2100 range. I knew another college professor that played and studied constantly but never got much over 1800. A physician I knew dedicated himself to chess after retiring but got no better than he was before, hovering in the 1600 range. My experience was much the same, I hit 1700 in OTB play, then got serious about playing and reading chess books, and after 5 years only hit 1850 and got stopped dead in my tracks, getting no better.  

People who study chess will reach the limit of their talent for the game, then basically peak out and get only margianally better no matter how long they study and play. 

I disagree profoundly with your numbers.  The USCF, for example, lays claim to less than 100,000 members.  A fraction of one percent of the population.  Surely, it's not the sole source of Class A and above players in the US, but it's going to have the lion's share active within its ranks.  And just as surely, the US isn't the highest-percentage chess playing population in the world, but it's also not the lowest, and it's one of the most populous nations.

So even if we stretch credulity and say 1% of the population are "chess players", only 10% or so are Class A players, and although at this point we have to speculate somewhat, I'd say less than 10% of those have dedicated a decade or more of full-time (meaning, once again, so much time that one can not take on any other profession), rigorous, Gladwellian effort to perfecting it.  This "10%" is a stretch on its own, because in the annals of chess, I know of only a handful of such players, and all have become Super-GM's.  There are no "college professors" who study chess pretty much full time, because they've already got full time jobs.  They study it as a hobby, and we're not talking about hobbyists.

I'd guess the true figure for those who play chess who legitimately dedicate themselves to full-time study to be a tiny fraction of 1%, with only Soviet era Russia probably being somewhat higher.

So we're looking at something a lot more like hundreds, or thousands of players who have tried and failed to become at least an IM, and that's not among a current group who will overturn the next time a list comes out.  Guys at the tops of these lists turn over generationally.

The flip side to that is that the people who "wanted to go to college, but couldn't get in" is legitimately in the billions.  There are those who crash and burn once there.  Those who get through, but can't get into the grad programs.  And then those who wash out once there.

Achieving those kinds of high academic standards looks easier, because there are so many more of them in the world.  But that's largely because many or most of the world's people pursue a path of forced, full-time academic rigor for fifteen or more years.  In reality, far fewer of the people who genuinely put a lot of their lifeblood into the pursuit get there in academia than do in chess.

Those arguing otherwise are failing to fallacies of either statistical misunderstanding or understanding of what "full time dedicated pursuit" means.  Chess just doesn't offer the kinds of rewards that allow one to pursue it as a full-time endeavor.

Absolutely correct. Guys who make these statements or set themselves such funny goals have never played against 2400 rated players, never analysed with them, have no idea what IM means chess-wise.

Nor do I mean to be, but sure I do.  I get it.  It's a chess site, and people are going to overvalue both the difficulty and the importance of the hobby.

How many people do you know who bypassed school growing up, who bypassed a career as adults, who instead devoted their entire developmental energies entirely to chess?

I know of tons of folks who anecdotally have said things like those mentioned above.  E.g., "No matter how much I study, I can't get past this hurdle."

But they don't even come close to meaning, "no matter how much." They mean, instead, "no matter how often, within the part time hobby window I'm willing to devote to chess, while still being a full-time worker/student/parent/whatever."

That kind of pseudo-rigor won't raise you to elite status in anything.  You don't pick up brain surgery by tinkering around with it an hour or two a night.  Even if it's "every night."  You devote most of the first thirty or so years of your life to it.  The people who do that in chess are the Super GM's.  The rest of us are just having a fun little go at it, and using words like "talent" to excuse ourselves from hard work or deny that we could have been more with focus and drive.

I was talking about worldwide and over the past 60+ years when the ELO system became standard when I said millions of players, and if my number of millions is still off, so what? The claim still stands that most people will hit a wall then fail to improve by much no matter how much more they study. 

Nobody studies their masters subject for 15 to 20 years full time either. They are in education, spending the majority of their time on unrelated subjects.

Even in university, for the majority of courses calling it full time, at least here in the UK is inaccurate. Most students don't spend anything like 40 hours a week.

Finally, someone with a 2300 FIDE rating who knows what they're talking about !

i easily spend so much time for chess per week however that only makes me ..... above averange player in my town? or something like that....

if you want a shot at IM then be prepared to study chess as much as you would for school/spend as much time as you would for normal job (around 8h a day) imo also should point out that playing chess for fun and studying it is quite different i think

(ofc if you are rly talented or chess genius in making thats other story XD)

Anyway, all this makes the more relevant question:

"Will I be an IM before I die, even if I make a committment in the present that I'm dedicate myself for the time and expense and sacrifice necessary to see it through?"

Since the answer to that question is almost certainly "no," no matter what you believe about individual human potential, even entertaining the idea becomes a bit of a fool's errand.

Consider instead taking up a hobby with better social or financial benefits.  Learn to restore old houses, or cook classic French cuisine, or collect antique coins, or work your way through the Tantra.