I'm saying on average such experience tends to wash out, at least among those who graduate, though I saw it in individuals by sophomore year. You have two group

I'm saying on average such experience tends to wash out, at least among those who graduate, though I saw it in individuals by sophomore year. You have two groups, one with some level of pre-college experience, and the other without (not even a HS programming class, though those with basically just that but not any personal learning are an interesting middle ground with parallels to 9-5 employee types that treat programming as just a job). Both groups have those who find the material easy overall (though the second will likely attend lectures; but these days the first too because attendance is mandatory at many places) and both groups have those who struggle on some things and must work and as a side-effect improve their general learning-to-learn abilities. (My own experience was a mix of both depending on the class despite having a general head start where I began in 8th grade with a book and a website dream.) By the end you'll see similar distributions with respect to measures like grades or time-to-complete-assignment or job placement and success, the starting buffs wash out. Admittedly my sampling is unscientific, and I'm willing to believe pre-college experience can help avoid some of the culling that happens, and it was especially useful to me to land a mostly part time job that wasn't an internship. I also may be biased by my choice of school where most my data comes from (though talking to coworkers and interns from various other schools at my job after college contributed) because my school was a lot more hard-core in terms of course load and especially in later years project focus -- the number of required CS courses typically exceeded other schools known for good CS programs like, say, Stanford, with 5 or 6 overall courses per semester rather than a more common 3-4, unless you did it in 5 years instead of 4.