Not all schools do that, however. Some have weedout classes with 30% or higher failure rates (I'm looking at you GA Tech!). This wasn't just a wakeup call with a C, "Oh, maybe CS isn't for me." It was more, "Here, we threw this course together for the 3rd CS course, we'll poorly introduce terminology and use TAs (some were awesome) who are only one semester ahead of you and terrible teachers. Your next 3 courses, that depend on this, will be much easier and better taught. Good luck!" And then 30% or more would fail.