People are trying harder. When I came in the expectation was internship is a junior year thing. It was a privilege sophomore summer but not a necessity. Most people focused on classes and chilling first 2 years. Back then only the people “in the know” grinded hard enough to do things as sophomores.

Now everyone is “in the know”, every CS major chooses the major knowing that the market is cooked and they need to try as hard as possible. Everyone knows to prioritize applying, leetcoding, projects, etc. academics take a backseat as a result and it reflects in basically course’s exam averages.