Read essays before you write them...

Longreads.com is a great site that aggregates essays from around the internet. I highly suggest it as a source for applicants to get the feel of what an essay should be, the flow and the structure. It covers a wide variety of topics. While of course plagiarizing is a horrible idea, it might inspire better writing. You can’t go wrong with emulating something that appears in the New Yorker, for example.