I feel like I know which Ivy you're talking about, and if I'm right that class has been fantastically designed for that purpose. I _hate_ the idea of a barrier class. Most students are already terrified at the idea of studying STEM. Why on earth would we further discourage them?
Yeah - you've probably got the right one. I think the real thing this shows is that if you teach intro classes well (and try really hard to get people from atypical backgrounds to take those intro classes in the first place), students don't drop out the moment the going gets tough because they feel unsupported and assume STEM "isn't for them." (I certainly was in that category and would never have studied computer science if I had had a different introduction to the subject.) The failure to teach many more intro classes this way is all the more acute at Ivy+ institutions because they're not lacking for resources.
