Disclaimer: I’m a morning person in general.
Personally I always tried for morning classes whenever possible. If I could be done with classes before noon (even if it meant an 8am class), that was a perfect schedule for me. The next best thing was finishing by 2 at the latest. For one, I’m already a morning person and was better able to focus in the morning and early afternoon. And for another, whenever I had later classes I’d get lazy and wouldn’t end up doing any work or studying until after my class(es). On days where I was done early, I was usually very productive because class had already put me in the studying mindset.
I’m in my last quarter (only one more week of classes!) right now, and I have one late afternoon class on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday and Thursday have been by far my least productive days, and then by the time I get home I’m feeling even lazier because it feels like there isn’t much more time in the day. It doesn’t matter that there are really about 5-6 hours where I can work; it still feels like there isn’t much time because I got home much later than usual. Compare that to Mondays and Wednesdays, where I’m done by 1:30, and Fridays, where I’m done at noon. I get a lot more done those days because I’m both in the right mindset and feel like there’s plenty of time to get stuff done.
Oh, another thing that’d happen if I had later classes: I may be productive for a few hours, but I was always in a nice rhythm when I suddenly had to leave for class. That would completely kill my productivity because I had to stop right in the middle of something, and it caused some frustration when I tried to get back to what I was doing. Compare that to morning classes, where I never attempted to get anything done before class because I knew I wouldn’t have time. I could get home, then get in a rhythm and continue relatively uninterrupted throughout the day until I came to a natural stopping point.
So yeah in summary, I definitely prefer morning classes to late afternoon and evening classes. But part of that is because I’m a morning person in general.