<p>Aw, JTKay, love the motto!</p>
<p>So ordinarily I like to answer questions in as few sentences as possible, but the best answer to these questions takes many many many sentences, so many that I’m going to ask my buddy Andrew Abbott, professor of sociology here, to do it for me. I encourage you to read all of the sentences, though.</p>
<p>(The “Aims of Education” is a speech given to incoming students at each O-Week, and this was the speech given in '02. He is not actually my buddy).</p>
<p>[The</a> Aims of Education Address (for the class of 2006)](<a href=“http://www.ditext.com/abbott/abbott_aims.html]The ”>The Aims of Education Address (for the class of 2006) )</p>
<p>Here’s probably the most relevant snippet:</p>
<p>
With the exception of those planning to become professors in the natural sciences, there is absolutely no career that is ruled out for any undergraduate major at the University of Chicago. What you do here does not determine your occupation in any way. You are free to make whatever worldly or otherworldly occupational choice you want once you leave, and you do not sacrifice any possibilities because you majored in something that seems irrelevant to that choice.</p>
<pre><code> As far as performance in college is concerned, there is not, as I said, any national evidence that level of performance in college has more than a minor effect on later things like income. And in my alumni data, there is absolutely no correlation whatever between GPA at the University of Chicago and current income. Get it straight. Whether you end up on Fire Island or in the Hamptons depends largely on things that are unrelated to what you do as an undergraduate at Chicago.
I hope then to have disposed of the notion that what you do here or how well you do it has any connection with your worldly success either in general or in detail. The general level of that worldly success is already guaranteed by your admission here and by the factors that made it happen. The detailed level of your worldly success depends largely on occupational choices that are unrelated to what or how you do here.
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