I used to be pretty active in this bracket, and my first toon was the same as my "main" toon i guess you could say, Tonkks, a female human. I played that for a WHILE. Like actively (at least 3+ bgs/day average throughout a 7 day period for about 2 years) and could hit every jump basically first try. There were some where i would miss occasionally, but never deemed "impossible". After the first rogue, i made like a gnome male, human male, nelf female, etc etc and could NEVER do as well as the human female. I think now there are jumps where you just cannot do as certain race/sex combinations, and stray away from those. I would tell your friend to go with whatever he is most comfortable with, as that has helped me in the past.
Hope this helps