Scrabble?! SHINIES

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Shimer College (pronounced ( listen) SHY-mər) was an American Great Books college located initially in Mount Carroll, then Waukegan and finally Chicago, 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 (and the Hutchins Plan) 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. In June 2017, Shimer became the Shimer School of Great Books at North Central College. Its academic program is based on a core curriculum of sixteen required courses in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. All courses are 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 is Socratic discussion. Considerable writing is required, including two comprehensive examinations and a senior thesis. Students are admitted primarily on the basis of essays and interviews; no minimum grades or test scores are required. Shimer has one of the highest alumni doctorate rates in the country.While in Chicago, Shimer occupied a complex designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on the main campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago's Near South Side. The American Institute of Architects has called the IIT campus one of the 200 most significant works of architecture in the United States, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.Shimer was, until joining North Central College, governed internally by an assembly in which all community members have a vote.According to The New York Times, students "share a love of books [and] a disdain for the conventional style of education. Many say they did not have a good high school experience". Students, who tend to be individualistic and creative thinkers, are encouraged to ask questions. Shimer has historically averaged 125 students, and enrolled 97 in 2014. Most Shimer alumni go on to graduate studies.In 2016, Shimer announced an agreement to be acquired by North Central College "with the intention of a completed acquisition on or around March 1, 2017." The agreement came to fruition on June 1, 2017 when Shimer became the Shimer Great Books School of North Central College.