Nah, the IMO gold medal on his resume alone puts him into a different category. Unless the hiring company is completely clueless, he’d get special treatment from the start. People like him are not like you and me.
As an undergrad, I got cold emails from the following companies: Jane Street, Citadel, Two Sigma, and several less known hedge fund/quant stuff.
Those were all for trading/analyst positions. Western companies never reply for software internship applications.
Google mails me every year and as if I want to interview for full-time, but they don't interview me when I apply for internships.
I got an intership offer from a big non-Western company, but I didn't get a work visa.
This is not to say that they would get preferential treatment in getting through the interview, but this person would not be interviewed like a regular SWE but by a specialized committee (one probably filled with more research-minded engineering staff)
Similarly, the questions would be tailored differently because the expectation of a research mind would NOT be strictly coding features / fixing bugs, but probably doing research