> How is first semester calculus a "weed-out" course when so many of these kids enter with transcripts indicating they've already taken calculus?

German universities have a simple solution: students who believe that they have already "learned" calculus in school (in a sense every pupil with an Abitur school diploma (the kind of school diploma that you need in Germany to study at a university) had to learn) should hold to this belief at their own peril. :-)

Hint: After one week, these kids will hopefully have realized that the level of calculus that they learned in school was very shallow. :-)