The student's ability is only a small part in the 'time before going solo' number of hours. Just as influential are:
- Quality of instruction
- Frequency of training hours leading up to solo standard (ie last five hours in one week or 6 months?)
- Cautiousness of instructor
- Dare I say it, but yes, instructor's/club's desire to extract money from student
Some people still believe that pilot A is 'better' than pilot B because he soloed at 6 hours, compared to B's 15. That's just silly. Ok, there will always be the complete no-hoper, but from what I've been told, they're pretty rare.