'The next best thing after perfection' - College? Yes. (SAT)

I have to write an essay to get a scholarship for SAT practice and, like most of us, I really want to go to college

This is my first draft and halfway there.. i need to get to a minimum of 1200 words & i'm around 600.. please be brutal and i promise to return the favor

thanks!!

I aspire to be a physicist, someone capable of changing the world and all that we see in it and all that we know of it. I want to be able to make a difference in the world during my lifetime and for the good of people around me and I know I have the potential to do so. Understanding the inner workings of the world and the way everything links together has been a certain passion of mine since I was younger and I have always wanted to be able to fully comprehend why things are the way they are. The first step to achieving my potential is being accepted in to a university that I feel will fully prepare to succeed in my ambition. But before I can do that, I must have the SAT scores to show for my work and to represent me and how much I truly deserve it. I feel that being given this scholarship will help set me on my path to greatness and will help to give me a better opportunity to display my potential and my desire to change the world.

I excel in mathematics and I have a great learning capacity with grades to show for it. I have been to different parts of the world and I come from an ethnically diverse background. Not only have I seen the world, but I have seen what is wrong with it, and in many cases, how other regions have solved or settled their problems. My father is Egyptian and my mother is Mexican and I have been exposed to many different religions during my life. My mother was pre-dominantly protestant but converted to Islam upon marrying my father. I am Islamic myself and I was raised in the Egypt. I have seen both the workings of the upper and lower class there, which is emphasized greatly in developing countries, and I have lived during both the peak of a dictator's rule and the fall of his rule. I am aware that there is no country that has purely peaceful workings and that there is no room for idealistic thinking in the sense of achieving a means without sacrifice. I am a diligent worker and determined when I am faced with a challenge that I feel will push me over the edge. I strive under pressure and when I feel that something is too difficult for me, I am determined to surprise myself and my colleagues by showing everyone I can excel at what pushes me to my limits. But do not misunderstand; I do not take up every challenge that passes my way because I do recognize that there are times when there is less benefit in being pushed than there is to be patient and work slowly.

My father taught me to aim high with my goals so that if I do not achieve perfection, I would be rewarded with the next best thing. For my college, I am aiming for Massachusetts Institute of Technology because it rewards with reputation and that it also has a very strong Technology based program. I look forward to being a physicist and having the ability to give form to not only to my own visions also that of others who too share the same desire to change the world and its structure as a whole. I envy the ingenuity of Bill Gates and my predecessors who managed to change this world's function as a whole and the convenience of day-to-day life.

^Yawn. How many other applicants do you think will be claiming/saying the same thing.
Not the best start already.