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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t think there are intentional “weed out” classes. I do think a lot of majors in colleges put a prerequisite earlier in the program, so that a student who is not cut out for a major gets a sense of what is entailed early enough – so they can choose another  major and still graduate on time.

There were classes in my kid’s computer science program that were required to take his second semester - before officially declaring CS. Quite a few kids bailed after those classes because they realized that it Would probably become evenmore difficult for them to succeed after that.[/quote]
A predetermined curve (bottom 20% out say) seems wrong. A set of standards—everyone with a 3 in these math, eng courses can contine—seems fine.[/quote]
It's not a fixed percentage.  Engineers are better at math and statistics than that.  Usually the prof plots the grade distribution and picks a cutoff that is below the bulk of students.  Most students are all clustered around the median, with a few who are stronger and a few who are weaker.  Sometimes the prof will use standard deviation to draw the line for D or F,  but sometimes it's more subjective based on the shape of the curve. The goal is that the kids weeded out are the ones falling below the bulk of the class, i.e., the tail of the parabola for the plotted grades.[/quote]

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