This can definitely play a role. Over the past several semesters all I've been doing is writing whatever the teacher wants to hear: their interests, political l

This can definitely play a role. Over the past several semesters all I've been doing is writing whatever the teacher wants to hear: their interests, political leanings, ideologies, everything. Why? Because it works and because I'm trying to "hack" the system, in PG's words. Back to the point, I think some students may very well just write whatever they think the teacher wants to hear and compounded with those extra credit points, you get selection bias in it of itself. The teacher may have a point, but maybe take it with a grain of salt. As a teen I see a ton of people using their phones constantly and decided to go cold turkey after my junior year (no social media except twitter to stay up to date with ML research and HN for cool articles). Now instead of spending time addicted to whatever everyone else is, I spend a ton more time coding and learning cool stuff.