If he's in charge of some super high level design boutique charging millions to customers that everyone is murdering kittens to get into, then I can understand his position.

4 critiques is not bad for a student/internship piece. Most students simultaneously do not have deep knowledge of prior work and are also (one of) strong designer or prototyper or researcher because those things simply take time/experience to get.

His bar to me seems like "entry-level position, 12 years JavaScript experience required" but for UX/UI