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In my own undergrad CS program, the CS101 hotshots fared no better, on average, than the kids who came in with no experience at all. How do you know this? At
by araneae 16y ago
In my own undergrad CS program, the CS101 hotshots fared no better, on average, than the kids who came in with no experience at all.
How do you know this?
At the school where I went, the distribution for CS101 was bimodal; higher peak were the experienced ones, lower peak were the neophytes.
- timr 16y agoI'm not referring to just CS101; I'm talking about the whole curriculum. That bimodality tends to go away once you're done taking classes that are a re-hash of what the experienced kids already know as freshmen. And no, it's not just the effect of "weeding out" the inexperienced kids -- as I said above, a number of the best students in my program had no prior experience, and a fair number of "experienced" kids flamed out once they hit the non-coding portion of the curriculum. I went to a small school for undergrad, so I knew everyone who graduated with me, and everyone who started with me. Later, I went to a very large graduate school, and while the same patterns seemed to hold, I can't say for sure.
- araneae 16y agoRight, but we're talking about the "weed-out" class effect here. If the girls get weeded out in 101 whatever happens later isn't relevant.