[nohaydeprobleme]

I can see both sides of the riskiness of studying the material before taking the course. On the one hand, a person who I see as highly accomplished person in mathematics told me that he did very well in his courses by pre-studying much of their material in the summer before they started, because he was both interested in the subjects and wanted to do well. But on the other hand, I also know of some people who took an introductory language course after previously studying the language, and received worse grades than people new to the language because they didn't put as much effort into the assignments as they didn't see the value (though they did well with minimal preparation for writing assignments).

I think it's better to pre-study, as if you go to the right university, you can take honours-level courses or enter more rigorous, challenging programs, which should still be challenging enough to engage you. Alternatively, if you don't like the challenge (though if you're the type of person to achieve that amount of self-study, you probably would enjoy it), you can take a more normal program and focus on more deeply learning the material over a longer period of time. With the higher grades from deeper learning, you can stand out and earn scholarships and grants to get practical experience by working in a professor's lab.

So, overall, I think it's better to pre-study if you can, as you can keep the benefits while minimizing the risk of boredom by finding ways to challenge yourself. Though in reality, the main issue for someone around 18 is that they might not even know about the risks of boredom, or how to challenge yourself in this way. Hopefully such people who are succeed in self-studying in advance, are around good people who can guide them to find ways to challenge themselves in a healthy way.

[hgsgm]

Oh no, grades. When you grow up, no one cares about grades.

[nohaydeprobleme]

Haha. The importance of grades depends on your goals: on the one hand, I know two engineering grads who scored multiple great internships with a sub-3.0 GPA, with one landing a very high-paying job thanks to these internships. But on the other hand, a mathematics professor persuasively said to my class that your life can be a lot easier if you do get higher grades. They can help with graduate school admissions, scholarships, and getting certain internships.

So, while grades don't really matter for the vast majority of great employers after graduation, good grades do make it easier to find opportunities earlier on. If it's not overly stressful for a student to achieve higher grades, it's worthwhile to score them for better early career opportunities (e.g. access to top labs and competitive internships).

But if it's too much of a burden for the student, you can be extremely successful career-wise regardless of grades, especially if you work hard and creatively to find ways to gain experience and demonstrate your abilities. For example, one successful former classmate found great internships via networking through their engineering design team, where the companies overlooked their GPA in favour of their demonstrated experience with engineering with the team.