I didn't explain that very well. students who were seriously considering the cs major could certainly just take calc their first semester and then take the real

I didn't explain that very well. students who were seriously considering the cs major could certainly just take calc their first semester and then take the real intro course next semester. at the same time, the university basically considered having taken calc in high school to be a proxy for the overall quality of the student's stem education so far. so if you were one of those people, you were encouraged to take the intro intro course first. this was also the course that people would take who were interested in cs but weren't stem majors. it was a poorly designed course for both purposes.