But even if he has another student who is helping him ... given the fact that he has only a BSc degree, it will be really rare if he has the sufficient knowledge to do any contribution to the field, which could play in his favor.
Do I not fully understand the concept of doing research ? Aren't only real contributions going to help him in his admission process ?
For example if he is interested in Machine Learning ... I can think of quite the stack of books to read ( above undergraduate CS level ), just so he can be sufficiently prepared to understand the basic concepts of the field. ( left alone, doing research in the field )