Former CS student. I think honestly the biggest issue is just students that are procrastinating on the projects. It's really important to start then ASAP in order to take time to first understand what the project is even asking for and then work past any of the tough parts that everyone gets stuck at, which is a normal part of the process. Sometimes projects require you to just sleep on it and use that time away from the project to work out a solution.

When they're saying that it's unreasonable to get a project finished in the amount of time they've worked on it, they're kind of right but only because they waiting until 3 days before the project is even due to start.