<p>Yes, the more I hear about why-would-I-want-to-go-to-college-just-to-prepare-for-a-job attitudes, the more they annoy me. The economy has changed a lot in the last 5 years, and a lot of people don’t have the luxury of dropping up to $250,000 on an education without putting what-comes-next front and center. And for what it’s worth, I was very much not a pre-professional. </p>
<p>But it’s a little rude to judge your classmates for pre-professionalism, just as rude as it would be for them to judge you for wanting to have a “laid-back” college experience. One of the many things I loved about UChicago was that it’s almost utopian (compared to the rest of the world) in terms of acceptance and tolerance. And that extended far beyond just religion and ethnicity: it also extended to political views and career goals. Maybe it’s because you’re all “in this together”… against the core curriculum. Marx sucks.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, academically, the school is not “laid back,” unless you don’t particularly care about having a GPA that doesn’t start with a 3.</p>