I'm not an admissions officer or familiar with the UK process, but if I was looking at two identical applications and one had taken the initiative to learn on their own and found a way to apply that, I might give it the edge. Particularly if you can elaborate on what you learned from it, and how you handled the challenges.

Completing projects can be key, compared to someone that has a lot of knowledge but no drive to continue when they run into a problem.

I'm not an admissions officer or familiar with the UK process, but if I was looking at two identical applications and one had taken the initiative to learn on their own and found a way to apply that, I might give it the edge. Particularly if you can elaborate on what you learned from it, and how you handled the challenges.

Completing projects can be key, compared someone who has a lot of knowledge but no drive to continue when they run into a problem.