A tipster forwarded me this hilarious recruiting “oops” email sent from Deep Springs College after it emailed her by mistake. Deep Springs is an all-male college, so recruiting high school females would probably not be in its best interests:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Deep Springs College [comcom@deepsprings.edu]
Date: Oct 26, 2007 3:24 PM
Subject: An Apology from Deep Springs College

Dear ******,

We write from Deep Springs College to apologize for the fact that you were sent our recruitment brochure by mistake this fall.

Deep Springs has an all-male student body. You received the brochure because you had an exceptionally high SAT score, and fell within most of our recruiting criteria. However, when purchasing one of our SAT mailing lists, we neglected to check the “MALE” box and our brochure was automatically sent to the addresses of some women.

Needless to say, we are very embarrassed by this error. The only explanation we can offer is that mistakes do happen. But most of all, we want you to know that this actually was a mistake, not some malicious prank.

Please accept our apologies for the fact that we cannot consider applications from women at this time. We apologize as well if we have inconvenienced you during this busy application season.

Good luck with your endeavors, wherever they may lead you.

Sincerely,
Silas Hundt, Student
Communications Committee
Deep Springs College

David Neidorf, Dean
Deep Springs College

Note that a similar but worse thing happened when Cornell accepted all its applicants via email, “Congratulations on your acceptance into the class of 2007!” Unfortunately, the acceptance rate that year was not 100%, and they had to send a disappointing followup.

2 Responses to “Deep Springs College Recruiting Women By Mistake”

1. Open English says:

   11/7/2007 at 4:33 pm

   It’s pretty funny that an all-male school made a mistake like that, but it’s not that big a deal
   I remember when that Cornell acceptance email fiasco happened… wasn’t it in 2002? I was a Freshman, one of my friends was accepted (for real) and then a lot of his friends got the congratulatory email and were so psyched. Needless to say they came down real hard when they got the apology follow-up email. You would think that someone would quadruple check the mailing list before sending something like that out, it is ridiculous that something like that should happen.

   Reply
2. The Top 8 Amusing Things You Can Find in Brochures | Print Create says:

   4/15/2009 at 1:11 pm

   [...] Deep Springs College, an all male college, sent recruitment brochures to women. The college bought a mailing list that included SAT criteria among their other recruiting [...]

   Reply