Any point in cold-emailing if you haven't started university?

Context: I'm going to a semi-target uni (Nottingham) this year, to study Economics. I am currently on a gap year.

The purpose of cold-emailing here would be to establish a connection/relation with the person, to find out more about how they got into the industry and what they do. If there's an opportunity to gain work experience/ work shadowing, that would be great but I don't think they'd offer that opportunity to someone who's not in their first year at some university.

I've built a cold-email tracker with around 100 contacts (approx 3-4 contacts per company). While the cold-email tracker might be useful in the future, is there any point in networking right now? Cold-emailing already has a low response rate but I wonder whether it's a daft idea to start cold-emailing people already.

I'd appreciate any advice, thank you.

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