Why Engineering at RHIT: College Admission Essay Sample

I hail from a family of successful engineers, and I have observed the profession carefully since my childhood. From an early age, I possessed a creative instinct and desire to work with mechanics. Simultaneously, my schooling revealed my keen interest for science and my consistent academic performances instilled confidence about my capabilities.

My interest in mechanics blossomed at the tender age of seven when my father gave me Hot Wheels cars as presents. As time progressed, I became more interested in the theories and the technical aspects of the mechanics; eventually, I dreamt of making my own robots someday. My pursuit for learning programming started in Year 9, when I designed a simple robotics arm by using CAD. Ever since, I have enhanced my programming skills by learning CAD independently. Currently, I have designed some prototypes robotics arms. These achievements were noticed by several friends in the school. Since my Year 11, I have been actively involved in my school's robotics team. In retrospect, engineering was a natural career choice for me.

Being an international applicant who is from Malaysia, discovering and choosing a U.S. education institution that fulfilled all my needs was a rigorous yet exciting task. I was lucky to find a college that had everything that I could possibly want in Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT). I especially have the enthusiasm in Challenge X and EcoCAR because I can continue my interest in mechanics and put in my effort to improve the vehicle that uses B20 biodiesel fuel to move.

During my secondary school years, I have taken a broad range of subjects from 3 languages to 3 sciences, from moral studies to world history, and I hope to continue this breadth in college. I am a believer in the interrelation of many disciplines. For example, the logical method of thinking encompassed in calculus can help when analyzing a philosopher’s argument. Man does not live by bread alone and the same applies for math, history, or other subjects. Overall, a broader education would be more satisfying because I’d be stimulating all parts of the mind. RHIT’s core curriculum would provide me with background in all disciplines and consequently allow me to develop a wider perspective. Without an extensive perspective, how can one honestly make good decisions?

Simply put, I have a passion for learning. At the RHIT, there will be students and teachers with similar enthusiasm who loves science, mathematics and engineering. As an easterner, I’d be able to learn best among these kinds of westerner students because everyone cares and loves about what they are learning. Other students and I who are from the same world would have the common goal of trying to attain as much as we can from whatever subject we are studying. We want to be challenged and provoked to think which is why we wanted to come to the RHIT.

An engineering student in RHIT described the academic experience to me like this: “You’ve got to have the mentality of a naked sex maniac walking through the south side after midnight: you’re in for trouble…but you really like that.” From that point, I’ve become increasingly enamored with the strength and vigor of the RHIT academic experience. College is, for everyone, a time of wonderful opportunity. I’m sure everyone has taken advantage of opportunities offered by college in their own unique way. At this point, I am confident that whatever it is I end up doing after college will require that I have spent my undergraduate years doing absolutely everything possible to prepare academically for the future. The only feasible way for me to spend four years doing anything is to spend it learning. In reading the U.S. news on the Internet, watching Friends and reading the New Yorker, I’m repeatedly fascinated by how much there is to know in the United States. I wish to spend my four years learning everything I can, as fast as I can, so I never have to look back and say “I wish I had known about this earlier.”

My college experience would not be complete if I were to pursue this kind of study in an environment where my seniors were less concerned with academics. That is why the RHIT is a small but the perfect place for me, because I am sure that I will meet other people there that share my love of learning together in a small environment. I know that I don’t want to stop learning about things related to engineering when I exit through the classroom doors. RHIT’s intense learning environment assures me that it is a place not for those whose sole obsession is good grades and a degree, but a place where I can meet friends who are more interested in science, mathematics and engineering than they are with reality TV and drunken shenanigans. If asking for all this is asking for trouble, so be it. I would rather be troubled and challenged every day while studying in RHIT than be challenged every day for the rest of my life for not having studied during in RHIT.