Anderson indicates the most obvious focus of a college essay is your future career goals. Though many applicants write about this topic, he believes few do so appropriately. Rather than focusing on how your future career will appeal to you and your desires, Anderson suggests focusing on how your future career will benefit somebody else, be they customers, recipients of charity or a specific industry itself. To draw a connection between your past experience your future career goals, project a personal interest or job experience from your past into your future.
For some colleges and universities -- particularly graduate degree programs -- the best applicants are those who clearly understand their future research focus and how that focus fits into the academic research community of the university. According to Anderson, this requires careful research of all colleges to which you are applying in order to identify scholars and researchers whose interests align with your own. Your essay, then, should detail your experience researching those interests and how you plan on expanding and adding to your research and, by proxy, the institutions research reputation.
In addition to research, some colleges and universities place a high premium on generosity. For such colleges, your essay should describe any philanthropic or charitable work you've accomplished in your past, how that work has benefited you and its recipients, and why you plan on continuing with it. The assumption, of course, is that if you have been generous in some way in the past, you will continue to do so. The important element of an essay that focuses on this generosity, therefore, is a lucid explanation of why you believe your work to be important.
Unlike colleges and universities that are interested in projecting a positive image to the external world, some colleges emphasize the importance of the community of that institution. Such colleges tend to be older. In an essay for a college such as this, you should emphasize -- if possible -- any connection you have developed with the school and why you believe the school's community will be important to maintain in the future.