I think you'd deffo need to come up with some kind of experience that would set you aside from the herd. It could be as simple as maintaining a blog for your projects, explaining your thought processes and detailing the nature of the problems you will face. As a bonus, you'll find that doing this will accelerate your learning.
Some people might say join an open source project... that would be premature in your case. The major projects are just too extensive and have coding rules, etc. Work through some simple programs on your own first and see how you go.
