I am a grad student in a top european university in CS, and tough love has been my experience as well. We have access to the grade distributions and they are st

I am a grad student in a top european university in CS, and tough love has been my experience as well. We have access to the grade distributions and they are steep but not multimodal, with many students failing the first mandatory and notorious courses. The usually grade depends on a single test, often oral which puts additional burden, plus, to even qualify for the test, students need to achieve well above 50% average on homework assignments.