Personal Statement Of Purpose: A Career As A Roller Coaster

Everybody loves a roller coaster, even if they can scare us to death. However, not many people study and analyze roller coasters. Fortunately, I am one of those people. When I heard about The Cornell Theme Park Engineering Group, I’ll admit my heart started to jump. Finally, this was my chance to share my crazy roller coaster ideas I had been conjuring up with like minded people. Things as crazy as a four-dimensional gyroscopic megacoaster could be considered outside of the sketches of my mind. However, there is a lot more to a roller coaster than a train and a lot of twisty track. Every aspect of a ride, right down to the very bolts holding a seat together, has to be meticulously designed to ensure maximum safety, comfort, and thrill. Enter,
Whether it be exploring science through school, clever little home experiments, or through personal research, science has always played a large part in my life. I have always been fascinated with how things work, and the mechanical and scientific principles behind the everyday objects we interact with. Something as simple as a stapler can be captivating, as I try to pin down the manufacturing process that could create hundreds of thousands of staplers. I relish in problem solving and coming up with intricate solutions to complex problems. Crazy things like building a 30 step Rube Goldberg contraption in my basement with three friends for a science and engineering competition are completely normal to an engineer like me. Even looking beyond engineering provides me with an opportunity to explore just how to improve and better the world that we live in. However, besides my passion for science, I also have taken an interest in the arts. I am highly involved with both the school choir and the theatre. As I delve deeper into the world of science and math, music and the arts serve as my outlet to the creative world and provides me with another community to expand my
A single man can’t build a megacoaster. Cornell Engineering provides the opportunity for me to attain my goals, and to make my aspirations a reality. One thing about Cornell Engineering that excites me is the flexibility provided to tailor my education to exactly what I wish it to be. If I want to blend mechanical engineering with structural engineering, architecture, and applied economics to create a theme park engineering education, I can do that! That is incredibly exciting, as it allows me to design my experience at Cornell to help me achieve my goals. I’m not naive, roller coaster design jobs are at best, scarce. However, I am confident that a blended Cornell Engineering Education can give me an edge. If, by chance, roller coaster design doesn’t work out, I know that my Cornell education can be applied to many other fields. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of a Cornell Engineering education is the experience I can gain by surrounding myself with a community of peers and professors who I know are as excited and interested in learning as I am. Cornell engineering will give me the connections and the experience I need to reach my