Before a student enters college, any experience they have with computers or learning computer science from their family or during Kindergarten to 12th grade can encourage them to continue their study into this STEM field in higher education. However, women tend to be excluded early on, with few of them reporting this kind of early experience using and learning about computers. This perception of computer science as a male-dominated field, especially from early on, may affect how women see this field of study and discourage them from studying it, along with further concerns over the image of computer science as individualistic and associated with "becoming a hacker".