It is definitely GC 1/2 at my school. The problem is not that the courses are necessarily hard per say, it's just the new transition that students face that weeds them out. Many VERY smart people went through high school smoothly because it was much easier to "get the A" than it is for the equivalent course in a college setting. Not to say that the course/subject is easier, but that students are more privileged in high school: homework/assignments to bump up grade (and lots of them); multiple quizzes/exams (so you have more opportunities to improve), more lenient teachers that have more opportunities to improve grades (maybe extra credit options), and some schools let you retake exams you did poorly on, or stay after school to finish your exam---basically, more "opportunities" to do better.
Now in college, the opposite holds true. No one is holding your hand anymore. Everything is up to you on how you succeed. And there's much less lenience on your grade. There's like, what, 2-3 exams for your grade? Many students simply do not understand how to prepare for situations like these right off the bat, and also, the material is presented in a more quick fashion, which adds a new change to curriculum. In GC 1/2 at our school, the exams were brutal. You had to reallyyyy have been prepared to do well. I remember in GC 2 how all those "wanna be pre-health" students got the heck out of GC after an exam or two. It was interesting, because there were a lot of people that were realllyyyy damn intelligent, but just couldn't handle the "weed-out rigor". Personally, I felt like I had a MUCH harder time with GC (specifically GC 2) compared to Orgo. It just depends. The main point is that they're trying to see who's in it for the real reasons.
