<p>My name is Dan and I am 17 years old and in the midst of the college admissions process and would very much like to attend Cornell University as a Chemical Engineering major. My academic record is as follows:</p>
<p>SAT 1: 1990
SAT 2 Chemistry: 740
SAT 2 Mathematics Level 2: Awaiting Score
AP Chemistry: 5
AP US History: 4 (taken sophomore year)
Cumulative GPA: ~3.8 unweighted</p>
<p>President of my schools Model Congress, President of Physics club, an active member of the National Honors Society, Co-founder of a local chess club (I also play competitively), and a fitness and nutrition enthusiast (I have lost, and kept off, over 50 lbs of excess body weight for the past three years)</p>
<p>Over 250 hours of community service between cooking at my local soup kitchen, teaching ESL, and coaching a junior football team</p>
<p>3 years experience working in the hospitality industry, both cooking on the line of a professional kitchen, and running a wait staff.</p>
<p>I am struggling with how to present myself to the school. At first I believed that my years of work experience would be a great selling point for me, but having found that Cornell is the only Ivy League school in the country to offer a Hospitality program I feel as though writing my college essay on my great passion for my job would actually hinder my chances of being accepted as an engineering major. Should I simply write the essay on my great passion for science (which I am comfortable doing), or will that undermine my work experience as I will not able to talk about it (I would prefer to use the short answer section to talk about my weight loss experience).
Any advice would be amazingly helpful during this stressful period, and I would like to thank you all in advance for your responses.</p>