If I took all the time I spent playing video games when I was in college and instead spent it doing schoolwork, I probably could have done something similar, as I was generally able to learn a semester's worth of stuff during the "crunch time" before exams. Playing video games was a lot more fun, though, so I have no regrets.
Crunch time motivation is very high quality and not trivially replicated. So I'd be impressed if you managed to pull this off in practice.
(BTW, I recommend students plan to do things during crunch time by default, or at least experiment with this. You're going to have an extremely high-quality source of motivation if you just wait a while--why not take advantage of it? If you want to work, and you have no imminent deadlines, either work on whatever you feel like working on AutoFocus-style or, if your energy level is high enough, work on some independent project that has no deadline--your opportunity costs are lower this way.)
Scott Young completed the four-year MIT computer science degree curriculum in less than one year. This is a post about how he did it.
During the yearlong pursuit, I perfected a method for peeling those layers of deep understanding faster. I’ve since used it on topics in math, biology, physics, economics and engineering. With just a few modifications, it also works well for practical skills such as programming, design or languages.
Here’s the basic structure of the method: