<p>I happen to have a daughter currently attending Shimer College. I can reiterate what visviva wrote above. The education is rigorous, classes very small, the community extremely close knit. Among Shimer graduates, 20-25% go on to receive doctoral degrees (a significantly higher percentage than Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.), and of these, the most common doctorate is a J. D. I would also note that my daughter started Shimer after her third year of high school, skipping her senior year (you don’t need a high school diploma to be admitted to Shimer if you have strong academics and can succeed in a college environment; she was only 16 when she started), which she considered a waste of time. She had a 4.0+ GPA and, like you, extensive volunteer experience, as well as having participated in summer “gifted” programs at Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Of course, Deep Springs and St. Johns are both great schools, also. My older two kids graduated from Reed College (in Portland OR) and Stanford University respectively. From what I have seen, Shimer is better than either of them–and far less expensive. Good luck!</p>