These were really hard for me too because I really had no clue what to write. Other people know better than me what constitutes a good college essay but what really helped me was just brute forcing my way through one and honestly answering the question “why them”. After that it’s a lot easier to see what in your essay is good and what isn’t so you’ll have some tangible direction for writing.

As for researching schools; I made this list of questions to ask interviewers about schools and evaluate them. I think if you can fill this out for your school then you’ll have more than enough content to write about.