at my school, most students take as their first CS course, a 123 course focused on a specific topic (app dev, robotics, computer graphics). No prior experience

at my school, most students take as their first CS course, a 123 course focused on a specific topic (app dev, robotics, computer graphics). No prior experience is required and apparently it has really improved on the number of students who drop out of the CS department after starting out with intro courses without seeing any real applications.