[ThePadawan]

There was a notorious course in my graduate program on Image Synthesis taught by seasoned professionals who really knew what they were talking about. And from the outside, it had really high pass rates, too.

Student interest was high, so when I enrolled in the course, we were around 25 students. By the mid-term it became obvious that most of us were interested, but couldn't put in the required 200% effort (compared to the credits we would receive).

Many (including me) dropped the course, and in the end, I think around 10 people sat the final - who did of course pass, since they were selected that way throughout the year.

[lawn]

Interesting.

In a similar way many opt-in courses were difficult but almost everyone passed. That's because only interested and motivated students took them. For example Graph Theory, Advanced Linear Algebra and a course in advanced algorithmic problem solving (basically competitive programming competitions).

[michaelt]

  from the outside, it had really high pass rates, too.
  [...] Many (including me) dropped the course,

The survey in the article actually divides students into four groups for this reason. They count those dropping the course; those not attending the exam; those attending the exam and failing; and those attending the exam and passing.

[ThePadawan]

Which is also why I'm not sure that picking CS1 was a good choice for study.

Surely failing CS1 is highly correlated with dropping out of a CS degree completely - or rather, it would be interesting to see if indeed failing CS1 was anticorrelated with failing other first-year CS courses.