Applied math grad student here. C/C++ or Fortran was required for my computational/numerical courses. Part of this was because of the emphasis on numerical stability and complexity.
I was, however, surprised starting out to find out how many of my fellow students had never programmed in a compiled language before - different focuses during undergrad, I suppose.
Another applied math grad here. Our intro numerical course was taught in Matlab since it made it a lot easier to focus on stuff like numerical stability and complexity without getting stuck in the details of teaching people C. Everybody who ever uses a computer to do any sort of math needs to know about concepts like stability, truncation, accuracy and precision, not everybody needs to know C or Fortran. It seems unnecessary to me to tie the learning of the one to the learning of the other
It wasn't before the intermediate courses that Fortran (77 and 95),C and assembly where taught. And even there Matlab was used to illustrate most higher level concepts.
I was, however, surprised starting out to find out how many of my fellow students had never programmed in a compiled language before - different focuses during undergrad, I suppose.