下面是一所學校的Guide Line： 

In view of the relatively poor quality of the study plan we received in the past years, the department decides to offer more concrete guidelines to help applicants writing their study plans. 

The intention is to tell applicants what the department is looking for in the study 
plans, and how the applicants can best distinguish themselves during the admission process. 

Of course these guidelines are only recommendatory. Applicants are welcome to use their imagination whenever/wherever possible. 

The study plan serves three purposes. First, it shows how well applicants can express 
their ideas in plain English. This requires well-organized thinking skills as well as 
clear writing. Second, the study plan is supposed to show how much thought the applicants have given to the particular fields in which they want to study. For example, if an applicant wants to study Neural Networks, exactly how much they know about Neural Network and why do they think they are capable of doing research in this field should be clearly explained in the study plan. The third purpose of a study plan is to provide students with
lesser grade an opportunity to present their intellectual accomplishments other than academic records. For research projects that require extensive hands-on capabilities, practical problem-solving skills will play as much important roles as course grades. 

To help the applicants write down the types of information that will interest the admission committee most, we prepare a list of specific questions that the applicants may consider to answer in their study plans. Again, answering these questions is not mandatory. They are suggested here to reduce the possibility of wasted efforts on the part of applicants. 

[1] What is the most significant achievement you’ve ever accomplished so far? This could be a class project, a piece of artifact you built, or a research, and it doesn’t have to be related to our program. 

[2] Is there any specific field you want to work on? Please be as specific as you can. Try to explain how your academic background prepares you to do research in this (these) field(s). 

[3] If you have any previous research experiences, please explain them in terms of your roles in the projects, your own contributions, and most importantly the process of deriving the solutions/algorithms you developed, if any. 

[4] In case your course grade is not particularly distinguished, why do you think you 
still have what it takes to do graduate study in our department?

Last suggestion: the applicants are advised to take writing the study plan as serious as they possibly can. Think of it as doing the homework for getting into graduate schools. The more efforts you spent on it, the better chances you have to be admitted into topnotch graduate programs.