Transfers Suspension To Affect Deep Springs Students

The College’s decision earlier this month to suspend transfer admission was hard news for the 1,308 students who had already applied to make the switch to Harvard next year. But for the students of Deep Springs College, a selective two-year institution situated in the High Sierra Desert, the new policy was uniquely significant.

Founded in 1917 by electrical pioneer Lucien L. Nunn, the small college on the Nevada-California border is known for giving students an active role in hiring their own professors, required ranch work, and sending what one Deep Springs alum called “a consistent flow” of its graduates to Harvard.

“They have very few problems with transferring or being admitted [to Harvard],” then-Deep Springs President F. Ross Petersen wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson in 2006. “Their biggest problem after transferring is trying to get involved and not become a number.”

Seven Deep Springs transfers currently count themselves as members of the undergraduate student body. While the admissions office does not keep tallies of transfer students’ schools of origin, the number does not appear to be an aberration. Figures cited in The Crimson in 2000 counted eight Deep Springs émigrés in the classes of 2000 and 2001.

The numbers are more striking when considering the school’s miniscule size. Deep Springs boasts a student body of less than 30.

According to Deep Springs alum Michael P. Zaletel ’08, three other people were admitted to Harvard along with him—one third of his graduating class of 12.

Zaletel added that if more top colleges were to join Harvard in suspending their transfer programs, Deep Springs might encounter difficulty drawing top students. The two-year college currently puts its applicants through a rigorous, two-stage application process that requires seven essays, an interview, and a three-day trip to its desert valley campus. Many of its students have already been accepted to top schools, including Harvard, upon gaining admission.

“Some people have their heart set on another school like Harvard, and if there was a general sense that your choices after Deep Springs were significantly reduced, yeah that would affect things,” Zaletel said.

Deep Springs graduate Noah A. Rosenblum ’08 echoed some of Zaletel’s concerns.

“More Deep Springers transfer to Harvard than any other school,” Rosenblum said, citing an internal Deep Springs survey. “So that Harvard is not taking transfer students for next year is a negative.”

“The negative is a real negative,” Rosenblum later added. “And to see the negative you have to look at how Harvard has provided a welcoming place for Deep Springs, and what Deep Springers have achieved at Harvard.”

The former chair of the Pforzheimer House Committee, Rosenblum exemplifies the kind of role that fellow Deep Springs alums achieve once at Harvard. Fellow alums include the President of the Dudley Cooperative and the former head of the Environmental Action Coalition.

Such stakes notwithstanding, Deep Springs Dean Justin Kim wrote in an e-mail that he knew of no pending plans to appeal Harvard’s decision.

Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath ’70 said that despite the recent pattern of admits from Deep Springs, the College did not view itself as having any implicit arrangement with the school.

“They compete for admission just like everyone else. We don’t have any targets or quotas on the number of students admitted from a particular school,” McGrath said. “It certainly has been true that we have had a number from Deep Springs, and I would be surprised if they would not apply once we accept transfer applicants again.”

But some wonder whether the College will ever return to accepting transfer applications. In recent years, Princeton University suspended applications from transfer students for a two-year period, only to extend the suspension into the present.

According to Zaletel, the College’s unexpected move—and the uncertainty that has prevailed in its aftermath—drives home the difference between administrative decisions at Deep Springs and Harvard.

“You’re so used to the administration [at Deep Springs] being people you can talk to and able to ask for justifications,” he said. “At Harvard I don’t have that same trust about the justifications that they gave us.”

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.