Perhaps people who don’t get why I want to study engineering can gain some insight here: 

In all frankness, I aspire to be an entrepreneur, not an engineer. Nevertheless, I realized that I needed the right technical and specialized engineering skills if I wanted to establish a high-tech innovation-based start-up in my home country. Given my strength in mathematics and in physics, engineering seemed the best field of study for me. Although I am strongly interested in business management, I felt that an engineering background would be a solid stepping stone towards setting up a company; the methodical and systematic techniques in engineering bolster decision-making and priceless innovation.

I was also influenced by the fact that many high-tech companies today were founded and built by engineers, without whom the seamless integration between the business world and the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs would have been absent. Of course, there are many well-known examples like Apple Computer, Dell Inc., Google, Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Merck, Boeing, etc., but there are also thousands of other non-engineering-based companies relying on engineers to function effectively and flawlessly in this age of information technology. Companies today employ complex systems and networks, making engineers thoroughly indispensable in the running of businesses. Indeed, engineers are versatile and adaptable, evolving themselves into business leaders when the need calls. (The Google Guys, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the founders of HP, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, never went to business school but nonetheless emerged as admired business leaders)

Such a wide range of options and customizability in engineering excites me to no end. My brush with raw engineering came during an attachment at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), Singapore in 2006, where I conducted research on how tensile stress affects the characteristics of strained silicon monosilicides. It deterred me from a research career (I didn’t want to be kept in a laboratory all day), but otherwise it offered me a very fulfilling experience which boils down to this: limitless possibilities of discovery. Engineering is a potentially powerful tool that, when harnessed well, can introduce novelties yet unseen. Merging engineering with business ensures continuous marketable milestones for the world.

Although the notion of starting a high-tech company is ubiquitous in the United States, it is rare in Malaysia. Many businesses in Malaysia are users of technology instead of being its creators. As tech innovation is lacking in my home country, I intend to use the experience and education that I will attain in Cornell University to establish such a venture in Malaysia. Cornell’s Strategic Plan to emerge as a hotbed of innovation in the six strategic areas may open many doors to Blue Ocean markets in the near future. With Cornell’s unwavering commitment to be the pioneer and leader in these exciting fields, I am gung-ho about the exploration opportunities offered by Cornell. Cornell’s commitment to ensure on-going improvements in its faculty, facilities, undergraduate curriculum and even its staff through its Strategic Plan speaks volumes about its single-mindedness in pushing existing barriers toward ground-braking technology. I am deeply interested in exploring Engineering’s new era of discoveries. Indeed, I regard Cornell’s strategic framework in the 21st century as an ideal incubator for a tech start-up in an uncharted field.

Disclaimer: This is by no means a model Cornell essay.