Those kids make good "experts" in thier narrow fields, but that doesnt last long. They are generally not effective leaders, thier usefullness drying up as the state of the art moves on. Some grow up and learn how to operate as leaders in a corporate or government environment, but most burn out once they meet the next generation of golden childs.
That's actually ok in a military context. Most kids right out of highschool dont serve more than a handfull of years. Then they are the corporate world's problem.
They are not considered experts in their fields. They are not senior in their fields, so that criteria is already off the table, eg, how to deal with legacy, production, and high sensitivity systems in regulated environments. (There are COBOL servers there!) Data science and accounting are fields too, so not sure why that is ignored. So that leaves junior criteria. I taught in one of the depts of one of 'the better' ones, and his peers are publicly lauding him with laughable examples of 'excellence' -- nowhere close to examples we use for describing top students.
They sound like regular A/B-grade CS students: unproven new grads. Motivated and high-energy, yes, which is sensible for a junior low-trust role if they pass other basics like references and criminal checks. At our current company, we would not have hired several of them in our entry roles due to the obvious issues that our routine diligence would surface (in recent work history: associating with criminals & criminal orgs, repeat googleable public displays of racism, etc). And the rest, for likely not being at the level of top students applying to us, irrespective of evaluating on academics vs DIY. Their examples would need to be significantly more compelling to change the conversation.
That's actually ok in a military context. Most kids right out of highschool dont serve more than a handfull of years. Then they are the corporate world's problem.