> GT's engineering, science and CS programs tend to smack people down in their first couple of semesters, and the worst thing you could do is let that get you down to the point of dropping back to your current situation.

Same at my school. The Intro to CS class (which I never took) was famous for failing you if you left out a semicolon on the written exam--"It won't compile."

Just keep plugging. There are hoops in place to thin the ranks. It's loosely based on merit, but the actual results can be quite arbitrary. Keep SICP in one hand and Kafka in the other.