Deep Springs 2023-2024 Discussion

Deep Springs Discussion Thread for Applicants in Summer 2022 to be Accepted in Summer 2023

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Itā€™s here :laughing:

OMG well hello againnnnn, so good to see you here.

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Hi! I just made a CC account for this :grin: Im a HS Senior looking to apply! I love love love deep springs, as I feel like Iā€™ve lost one of the most important things inherent to humanity: my ability to think. I know this sounds odd but it makes sense in my head! Lol!! Why are you guys applying?

Hi @aoifinger , thanks for joining the conversation :grin:

I totally get what you mean by losing your ability to think - or at least I think I do. There are times that I feel higher education (or systemized education for that matter) often tries to mould you into a specific worldview, that there is a ā€œrightā€ way to do things. It feels like thereā€™s a pressure to conform and adopt ideas that you donā€™t necessarily agree with simply to survive in society as we know it.

Why am I applying? Well, thereā€™s a lot of reasons but I think the main one is that I feel Deep Springs will help equip me with the tools necessary to transform society for the better. I just feel that thereā€™s something off with the world right now, sort of like everyone is simply going through the motions. At least from my point of view, everyone seems to be existing rather than living life if that makes sense. And I donā€™t think that this is anyoneā€™s fault per see - rather a consequence of a faulty system that people just donā€™t know how to get out of. I suppose that I want to revolutionize this system, change it for the better and at Deep Springs, simply by being there, I feel like Iā€™ll be able to gain skills and perspectives which will help me reach this goal. I know I havenā€™t gone into too much detail as to exactly how Deep Springs will help me do this - Iā€™m not even 100% sure that I can without being there - but if you want a more detailed (speculative) reply, feel free to pm me. What about you though? Why are you interested in applying?

Hi all! Just found this forum. How does everyone feel now that applications are in?

That sounds awesome!! Iā€™ll DM you soon with my answer as well! The thread this year seems torpid. Do you have any guess for why that is? I was looking forward to speaking with other prospectives :frowning:

Hi!! I feel a bit apprehensive abt my app. Last minute I had a ton of issues and realized I forgot to finish a supp. Im not too about not getting in, tho, I always have next year!! Hby?

Hi @suspiring.eyes :smile:

Iā€™m actually feeling really relieved now that Iā€™ve submitted. Iā€™ve been putting off so many other deadlines just to focus on the essay so now I have time to get back to those. But at the same time, Iā€™m feeling rather anxious - I keep thinking that I could have written the essays better or if I had more time then maybe I could have taken a different approach. More than that though, I guess Iā€™m feeling anxious because of what Apcom might say in December. What about you though? How are you feeling?

Cool! I look forward to it :yum:

As for why the thread this year seems torpid, I could guess a number of things. Maybe there are less people applying (which I highly doubt), maybe this thread (and others like it) are heard to find, maybe other prospective are using a different platform that we donā€™t know about, or maybe people are hesitant to participate online. I mean, the last one is probably the most likely reason. I mean, imagine if we all discussed the prompts such as the beauty one. Eventually, our differing perspectives would converge and all of our essays would practically be the same. Iā€™m guessing then that by the end of the second round, more people will show up, but I donā€™t know.

Same! I had to cut so much out to fit the word requirements, it was really frustrating. I also definitely went way over the word count with the two prompts on the supplemental document, but I hope itā€™s no big deal. Obviously, I really want to get in, but Iā€™m also trying not to put too much stake in it. Did anyone else answer the injustice prompt?

Really sad this thread is so slow this year! Iā€™m a high school senior who appliedā€“wrote most of my essays on the weekend before, which wasnā€™t fun, but I feel pretty good about what I ended up with (except for the kids question, didnā€™t know what to write past the first paragraph lol). I wrote my long essay about beauty. Anyone else lurking on this thread?

Hey guys I also wrote about beauty. Iā€™m happy with what I submitted and eager for dec 15 to come around. What books or pieces of art did people write about?

I wrote about the book Why Fish Donā€™t Exist by Lulu Miller, and about the song ā€˜Rippleā€™ by Grateful Dead!

Hey @knoah and @fynbos welcome to the thread :partying_face:

Thereā€™s probably a lot of other people who wrote their essays last minute or found out about Deep Springs later than others so no need to worry about that. Not being able to write that much shouldnā€™t give you reason to doubt either - most of my essays this year were pretty short, my beauty essay for example was about 300 words short of the word limit.

As for the supplemental essays, this year I wrote about 怊Blink怋 by Malcom Gladwell and the movie怊Inception怋. I wrote about this first one because it really helped me with my indecisiveness, it helped me see that the problem wasnā€™t so much making the decision but rather realising the decision I already made subconsciously. I wrote about the second one because I was really inspired by the idea of lucid dreaming when I first watched it, unfortunately, Iā€™ve yet to have a lucid dream, but in my pursuit of lucidness, I started eating healthier, exercising more, and overhauled bad sleep habits.

I wrote about Faust by Goethe and the film Hidden Fortress. It was a bit of a challenge to describe the impact of these works in 150! Did you all find the word count on these difficult too?

Yeah, the word limit was pretty hard to work around. Last year they only asked us to write about a single book and we had 300 words. I sort of averaged my word count for the two works this time around - the first one was about 160 words and the second one was about 140 words. Hopefully, Apcom wonā€™t mind :sweat_smile:

Does anyone have predictions for how the total # of applicants this year will change because of the 60 minutes segment? Do they normally tell how many applicants they get each year?

Hi @knoah , when the 60 minutes segment came out last year I was told about 500 applications were made. But since that was a year ago I donā€™t really know how that number has changed. Normally, they donā€™t publish a yearly statistic - I only know because I asked one of my friends who was attending DS at the time.

Is the decision date definitively Dec. 15?