3) It is true that having flight experience will help give you a slight advantage through Solo... after that everyone is esseintailly equal.

I don't know about that...
solo comes real fast - and up until then, it's just a matter of learning the local procedures and getting used to the airplane. I've found that later on, previous experience gives some guys an edge of varying degrees when suddenly faced with a non-standard situation in the "canned" UPT environment. i.e., more "Situational Awareness" and "Airmanship" (both are graded items on every flight.)