The study of doctorate rates was conducted by Professor Gary Glen Price of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He is part of the department of curriculum and instruction. The only schools that ranked above Shimer were California Institute of Technology and Harvey Mudd College in California, both engineering schools. Shimer College is the only one of the three in the country which teaches with a curriculum based on original source materials, often called the Great Books. Students learn the principles of mathematics by reading the original works of Euclid or Descartes and science by studying Darwin, Newton, Galileo and Einstein, he said.
Most Shimer graduates go on to earn advanced degrees.
Moon said the average Shimer student outscores three of four potential graduate students on the Graduate Record Exam.