Because they have minimal admissions filter and constantly tell students not to give up, to fight imposter syndrome, student testimonials, "this is the toughest thing you'll ever do but it's so worth it."

College is gated by GPA and standardized test scores. You can quibble over the effectiveness and wisdom of this specific gate, but the upside is that mediocre students aren't going to spend a year and $30,000 convincing themselves they're going to major in CS at MIT. At Lambda, students quit their jobs, and take months out of their lives, only to find out 4 months later that programming isn't for them.

It almost seems as if there should be a book or a website the gist of which is: "If you can't and don't want to plug through the concepts and problems here, you're wasting your money to go to a bootcamp."

Heck, there are "intro" (OK, some of them aren't really) MOOC classes that, while more theoretical in some cases, should give you a pretty good idea if this is something you're really willing to devote a lot of time and money to.

> College is gated by GPA and standardized test scores

I recently learned this is increasingly no longer true. Many top institutions have made standardized test scores optional in recent years, and we're a few years away from it becoming normal to not even take the SATs and get into multiple ivy league schools as a top student.

> Why are they held to this super high standard to teach a difficult subject (computer programming at a high level) to all kinds of learners at all levels?

because this is the standard they advertise to and represent as the capability of their learning platform and their teachers?