In Germany, school leavers without an intermediate school-leaving certificate often enter so-called prevocational programs. In this article, we use data from the German National Educational Panel Study to investigate whether and how these young people can benefit from these programs in their further educational careers. We focus on three potential developments: catching up on school-leaving certificates, establishing linkages to firms, and improving one's application behavior. First, we ask who among the school leavers achieves development in these three areas during program participation. Second, we analyze if these developments are helpful for entering vocational training afterwards. We show that developments in all three areas are connected to better chances to enter vocational training. However, young people make different use of prevocational programs: While those with better starting conditions are more likely to catch up on school-leaving certificates during these programs, those with poorer starting conditions mainly establish linkages to firms and improve their application behavior.