page_title: Shimer College
section_title: Student life
hierarchical_section_title: Shimer College / Student life
caption_attribution_description: This file was uploaded with Commonist. Shimer College students in front of Galvin Library on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology
context_page_description: Shimer College was an American Great Books college located initially in Mount Carroll, then Waukegan and finally Chicago, Illinois. In 2017, it was incorporated into North Central College as the Shimer School of Great Books in Naperville, Illinois.
  Founded in 1853 as the Mt. Carroll Seminary in Mount Carroll, Illinois, the school became affiliated with the University of Chicago and was renamed the Frances Shimer Academy in 1896. It was renamed Shimer College in 1950, when it began offering a four-year curriculum based on the Hutchins Plan of the University of Chicago. Although the University of Chicago parted with Shimer in 1958, Shimer continued to use a version of that curriculum. The college left Mount Carroll for Waukegan in 1978, moving to Chicago in 2006. It was acquired by North Central College in 2017.
  Its academic program was based on a core curriculum of sixteen required courses in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. All courses were small seminars with no more than twelve students, and are based on original sources from a list of about 200 core texts broadly based on the Great Books canon. Classroom instruction was Socratic discussion.
context_section_description: The New York Times, calling Shimer "one of the smallest liberal arts colleges in the United States", described its students as "both valedictorians and high school dropouts. What the students share, besides a love of books, is a disdain for the conventional style of education. Many say they did not have a good high school experience." Shimer students tended to be individualistic, creative thinkers and are encouraged to be inquisitive. The college enrolled 97 students in 2014, about half from Illinois. Of these students 41 were women, 25 percent were students of color and 76 percent were age 24 or over. Forty percent were first-time, full-time college students. Of the full-time students attending for the first time in 2012, 86 percent returned for their second year. Sixty percent of students who entered in 2007 completed a bachelor's degree in six years.
  The college has a tradition of community meals dating back to the Waukegan campus, when the community would meet for potluck meals and discuss matters of general interest. The Orange Horse, Shimer's biennial talent show since the 1960s, invites students, faculty and alumni to read poetry, sing, play music or tell jokes, individually or in groups. The Shimer theater program produces plays complementing its curriculum, offering anyone who wants to participate the chance to do so. Recent productions have included Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.
  In addition to student services at the McCormick Tribune Campus Center and its health and athletic facilities, while located in Chicago Shimer students could participate in the more than 150 student organizations sponsored by IIT (including Liit Magazine, IIT's student-run literary magazine and IIT's on-campus radio station, WIIT, where students can host a show). As students at North Central, Shimerians will have access to the full range of student services and student organizations.
caption: Shimer students at the Galvin Library; students have access to IIT's student activities.[118]
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "CYBERSHOT", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2006:07:27 00:38:15", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "256", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "698", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6526", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/400", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:05:03 12:55:37", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:05:03 12:55:37", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "61/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "184", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "169", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}