What a friend would tell you
What Deep Springs is looking for
Deep Springs selects through a multi-round process that includes interviews with current students and a trial visit to the ranch. They want intellectuals who also want to do manual labor, govern themselves, and live in radical isolation. Your writing and interviews carry all the weight. Show that you have thought seriously about why you want this specific, extreme model of education.
What students wish they'd known
You will spend two years milking cows, irrigating fields, and butchering livestock alongside seminars on Heidegger. There are 26 students and no women (though the college began admitting women in 2018, it remains overwhelmingly male). Social isolation is total. There is no degree granted; you transfer after two years to complete a BA elsewhere. This is not college as most people understand it.
Deep Springs might be a fit if...
- You are drawn to a life of the mind combined with physical labor and want both in equal measure
- You can thrive with 25 other people as your entire social world for two years in the desert
- You see a two-year program as a foundation, not a limitation, and plan to transfer to a four-year institution afterward
Deep Springs Admissions Strategy
Application Info
Plans: Two-round process (first round closes Nov 2)
Deadlines: RD November 2 (first round)
Deadlines: RD November 2 (first round)
Test Policy
Test-optional
You choose whether to send scores. A strong score helps your case; a weak one is better left off.
Demonstrated Interest
Not Tracked
Not tracked. Skip the info-session circuit and put those hours into the application itself.
Interview
Required (in person, on-campus)
Yield Rate
98%
98% of admitted students enroll. Almost nobody turns this school down, so waitlist movement is rare.
Want to boost your odds at Deep Springs and every reach on your list, so admissions stops feeling like a coin flip?
Join the free one-hour workshop from two Harvard grads who have helped 3,000+ students get in. Parents welcome.
Cost & Financial Aid at Deep Springs
100% (all students)
Avg Merit Aid
Tuition is covered for every admitted student (Full ride). Need-blind admissions. Meets 100% of demonstrated need. 100% receive financial aid.
What you get for it: Deep Springs spends about $100,000 per student per year on instruction and student resources, roughly 7x the $15K national average. You see it in class sizes, faculty access, and research budgets.
What Deep Springs Graduates Get
$58000 (post-transfer)
Avg Starting Salary
100% (grad school)
Employed or in Grad School
Deep Springs Campus & Culture
The Campus
Deep Springs sits in a high desert valley on the California-Nevada border, surrounded by the White and Inyo Mountains at 5,000 feet elevation. The campus is a working cattle ranch: a handful of cinder-block and wood-frame buildings, a dairy barn, an alfalfa field, and not much else. The nearest town, Big Pine, is 30 miles of dirt road away. There are no streetlights, no cell service, and no neighbors.
The Social Scene
Extreme isolation in California desert, 26-person cohort, ranch labor mandatory
Deep Springs Traditions & Trivia
Labor Program
Every student works about 20 hours a week on the cattle ranch and alfalfa farm in the California high desert, switching roles every two months, from milking cows to cooking every meal for the entire community.
Student Body Governance
Students run a weekly assembly that handles discipline, labor assignments, and academic planning, making decisions that at any other college would belong to administrators alone.
Academics at Deep Springs
What Deep Springs is known for
2-year residential college, mandatory ranch labor, elite transfer pathway
Most popular majors at Deep Springs
Standout programs
Theoretical physics, mathematics, philosophy, literature
How the curriculum works
Self-designed curriculum with faculty advisors, heavy seminar focus
Recommended high school courses
4+ English, 4+ Math, 3+ Science (including physics), 3+ Social Studies, 2+ Foreign Language
Notable Deep Springs Alumni
William T. Vollmann
Novelist and journalist (PEN/Faulkner Award), Deep Springs class of 1981
If you like Deep Springs, also consider
St. John's College
Great Books curriculum with similar intellectual intensity, less physical labor, Santa Fe or Annapolis
Reed College
Iconoclastic academic culture in Portland, Oregon, with more social life and a four-year degree
University of Chicago
Comparable intellectual seriousness in an urban setting with a full university experience
Bard College
Unconventional academics in the Hudson Valley, more arts focus
Oberlin College
Small, intellectually intense, progressive, with conservatory access and a four-year degree