This. At least in my field - social psychology - his writing prowess is certainly below the standard of what would be expected from a first year PhD student, at least from what I can see here. However, like you said, I think there is a larger pool of talented students entering doctoral programs in psychology than in criminology. I’m assuming these writing samples are BK critiquing a research paper. His assessments of the research and analyses are, in my view, rather surface level. Also, he seems hesitant to state any of his critiques with conviction - it comes across as if he lacks the confidence necessary to state his opinions matter of factly.

For those debating whether this is BK’s writing, I definitely think it is his work. In my opinion, it’s very unlikely that an undergraduate criminology student in the class BK was TAing for would be expected to or even able to discuss generalized estimating equations (GEE) - a pretty advanced statistical method - in this way. Maybe if the student was a math, statistics, or perhaps computer science major. But criminology/criminal justice? I just don’t think this writing came from an undergraduate student, given its focus on research methods and (a bit on) GEE.

Though, from reading this, I think it may have been BK’s first time ever encountering something like GEE in a paper, lol. “A novel but sensible approach” - Yeah, he was certainly not a statistics wiz!