When I was at University all my spare time was taken up by running a student media outlet, playing sports, and volunteering my time to student run services.

I would argue that all of these things have been much more helpful when finding work and interviewing than having Github commits.

And when I'm the interviewer, I certainly don't care how many Github commits someone has. If a new grad can't show me that they have experience working in a team of some description then it isn't going to work out.