> He was denied by: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin.
His only acceptances: University of Texas and University of Maryland.
Wild. I looked around for another few articles hypothesizing why he got rejected. It basically sounds like the relative measurement of being 'only' top 9% at the #1 public school in the US and applying for CS (a very competitive major) made his application a lot harder. It's been 12 years since I went through the undergrad application process and I don't think my application was anywhere as strong as his was. I am generally in favor of considering the opportunities an applicant has available to them relative to what they have accomplished (hard to take 20 AP classes if your school only offers 10 of them, and yes I'm aware you can take an exam even if you didn't take the class), but this seems taken to extremes.
I don't generally have a lot of empathy for people complaining about not being accepted to colleges but having a high GPA at a competitive school, and a high SAT score, as well as having an interesting-enough 'hook' like his own moderately successful startup should've at least gotten him into one in-state school. I'm not familiar enough with the application process now and nothing states that if he was denied from the CS department while being accepted into the university itself which was a common outcome for applicants when I was a student. I think the lawsuit is a good thing hopefully, I think there can be anti-Asian American-bias for things like this but that bias tends to be ignored and this is a good sample case to bring that bias to light.
See in comparison to Abby Fischer (sp?) who sued University of Texas for being denied with a rather underwhelming application.
> I don't generally have a lot of empathy for people complaining about not being accepted to colleges but having a high GPA at a competitive school, and a high SAT score, as well as having an interesting-enough 'hook' like his own moderately successful startup should've at least gotten him into one in-state school.
That’s the thing. It’s one thing for someone to be rejected from only the very best universities or to have a good-but-not-great resume and face rejection. But to have perfect grades, near-perfect test scores, multiple awards in coding competitions, a startup, and still get rejected by Cal Poly or UC Davis or Michigan or Wisconsin? It makes no sense and shows something is seriously wrong here.
My only guess with Cal Poly/UC Davis (less certain about Michigan or Wisconsin) is that the many other extremely successful CS applicants from good Bay Area schools also applied there as their 'safeties' since they're in-state, and those schools had artificially high denials as a result? wild guess. I'd suspect there's some "I'm sure you're not going to go here"-denials coming from lower-ranked schools when they get applications from strong candidates. Given that he was accepted to UT and UM and he declined to attend either (I'm making the possibly wrong assumption that his family could've afforded the out-of-state tuition, but given his father's job I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption), I doubt he would've attended those "safeties" even given the opportunity.
(1) Do we know if he was applying to these schools as an impacted major? I went to a UC school and computer science (which I'm guessing was his stated major, based on the Google job offer) was an impacted major, and clearly stated as such. It was harder to get in as a CS major than as a bio major.
(2) It's kind of unclear from the article, but is the argument that being hired by Google is evidence that he _should_ have been accepted by those schools? Or is that just an auxiliary detail?
From the web site of the organization they started up, SWORD (https://sword.education): "Based solely on these assessments, without any external influence, Google extended Stanley a full-time employment offer for a position requiring a Ph.D. or equivalent practical experience." I think the job offer is part of the argument.
His father is a software engineering manager at Google already. That probably played a larger role than they want to admit (merely knowing somebody who works there can be a huge advantage for getting in, even if they don't refer you or support your packet internally).
Are CS majors still impacted? I would have thought the continuing multi-year industry layoffs, the scapegoating of "Big Tech", and the AI hype/doom train would have reduced its popularity.
(1) He applied in computer science. Other sources mention this student was also very successful in CS-related competitions - first place in Battlecode, third place in pico CTF, etc. So he was essentially a top candidate.
(2) Yes, I think that is the argument, that Google was willing to hire based on merit while universities are running admission processes that discriminate against Asian students even when their claimed policy is to not discriminate. The lawsuit against the University of California is due to UC’s lack of transparency or responsiveness on investigations into this student’s rejection.
His father is a manager at Google, which means we shouldn’t assume that Google’s hiring decision is based solely on merit. Even if everything is entirely above board, having someone with direct experience in the hiring process coaching you is a big edge compared to what other applicants get.
Re: the UC decisions, I hope this gets a fair investigation but I will note that I know multiple people who’ve been involved in university admissions who’ve all commented on how insanely competitive things are now at the top schools. Everyone got the message that they should major in CS over the last couple of decades and the programs mentioned in the news articles must get a hundred applicants for every open spot.
I’ve heard too many stories about turning down kids with perfect SATs, multiple AP 5s, great extracurriculars, etc. because they weren’t even the only graduate from their high school with those characteristics.
If folks aren't aware, there are a number of schools in the Bay Area (as well as Massachuesetts, New York, and many other places) where there are 3-5 or more "top students" all of whom have between 4.2 and 5 GPA, near-perfect-to-perfect SAT, as well as sports/music/other activities, and the universities have a selection algorithm that tries to pick no more than one such applicant (like a per-highschool quota) that falls into an equivclass.
College admissions are a second-order planning process (IE, you have to consider whether the applicant is likely to accept your offer, if you forgo an offer to another candidate with lesser creds that was more likely to accept). See https://www.amazon.com/Gatekeepers-Admissions-Process-Premie... for some insight into the process.
Thank you for adding that. I should have added one of the things I heard was a parent strategy recommendation to move to avoid having that competition. If that’s at all rational, it seems like a searing indictment of the whole system.
> His father is a manager at Google, which means we shouldn’t assume that Google’s hiring decision is based solely on merit.
What would that change? If you know how those companies hire, it’s not like his father would be allowed to even interview him, let alone hire him. You still have to make it through several interviews with other people.
See the sentence immediately following the one you quoted. Interviewing is famously prone to subconscious bias, and having someone who is familiar with the process can give people a big leg up: they’re going into it confident that they belong there and familiar with the structure and general types of questions (this is the same reason why rich people pay for test prep classes for their kids even though those won’t fundamentally change their kid’s intelligence) and cultural literacy builds rapport with the interviewers - if they think of you as an in-group member, they’ll rate you more favorably and be more understanding about mistakes.
Again, absolutely none of that is cheating - humans are just prone to thinking we’re far more rational than we actually are and there’s something like half a century of psychology and neuroscience studies showing that it’s both significant and requires effort to correct for.
Do we know that he was a top candidate though? Like, I know that sounds obtuse, because clearly he had some good scores, solid GPA, etc. But in a vacuum it's hard to disprove that there weren't 1000 other candidates with equally impressive stats.
I remember doing something after school with a bunch of people lead by some college admissions staff.
We were given 4 fake students and told to admit one, waitlist one, and reject two.
I was a bit shocked at how many people rejected the student I thought was the most meritorious on the argument of "they're not going to accept our offer so we shouldn't reject the other students that might".
I can believe Asians are explicitly discriminated against in admissions (and IMO that's unfair). But I can also believe this teen genuinely got rejected from all 16 colleges and accepted by Google out of luck.
Competitive colleges get more near-perfect applicants than admission slots. Extra-curricular achievements are subjective, and admissions don't have much time to thoroughly review them. Ultimately, decisions must involve a lottery, so anyone whose not truly exceptional has a non-negligible possibility of being rejected from a university like MIT (or an employer like Google).
It may be that the combined chance of being rejected 16 times is incredibly small, but the independent chance for each college is not. Unlucky for him, but unless there's specific evidence, one of his rejections alone is exceptional (e.g. he applied to a non-competitive college that accepted every other applicant with similar GPA), or there's evidence that any admissions are biased against Asians in general, I don't think the case should have merit.
I like to believe that attending an especially prestigious undergraduate university doesn't benefit one much more in the long run than a less prestigious but competent one, and that the most ambitious people can succeed anywhere. At least for this teenager, being hired by Google at 19 is almost certainly far better for his goals and future than if he was rejected but accepted to any of the colleges. Since that acceptance also involved luck, he should be thankful.
> Stanley Zhong had a 4.42 GPA from Gunn High School and 1590 out of 1600 on the SATs. He also founded his own document-signing startup and tutored underserved kids in coding. His college rejections and his employment offer from Google became a lightning rod in the national debate over the college admissions process.
> Stanley Zhong and his father Nan Zhong filed a new complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleging the University of California illegally engages in racial discrimination in its admissions process. The use of race was banned by California voters through Prop 209 in 1996 and affirmed in an unrelated case involving Harvard in 2023.
> The Zhongs' suit follows one filed on Feb. 3 by Students Against Racial Discrimination, which alleges UC's use of holistic admissions--meaning non-academic factors, like extracurriculars and life circumstances--diminishes academic merit and hurts Asian American and white applicants.
These institutions will tell you they aren't just there to provide boilerplate "I grind harder than everyone else" degrees, they go out of their way to be more than that. That's why their degrees are valued. In order do to this, they provide an enriched social environment that exposes students to more than just the top X people who were the best at grinding on test prep.
Someone could easily start a school that only accepts based on test score, nothing else. I wonder why nobody thinks that would be a valuable degree?
> He was denied by: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin. His only acceptances: University of Texas and University of Maryland.
Wild. I looked around for another few articles hypothesizing why he got rejected. It basically sounds like the relative measurement of being 'only' top 9% at the #1 public school in the US and applying for CS (a very competitive major) made his application a lot harder. It's been 12 years since I went through the undergrad application process and I don't think my application was anywhere as strong as his was. I am generally in favor of considering the opportunities an applicant has available to them relative to what they have accomplished (hard to take 20 AP classes if your school only offers 10 of them, and yes I'm aware you can take an exam even if you didn't take the class), but this seems taken to extremes.
I don't generally have a lot of empathy for people complaining about not being accepted to colleges but having a high GPA at a competitive school, and a high SAT score, as well as having an interesting-enough 'hook' like his own moderately successful startup should've at least gotten him into one in-state school. I'm not familiar enough with the application process now and nothing states that if he was denied from the CS department while being accepted into the university itself which was a common outcome for applicants when I was a student. I think the lawsuit is a good thing hopefully, I think there can be anti-Asian American-bias for things like this but that bias tends to be ignored and this is a good sample case to bring that bias to light.
See in comparison to Abby Fischer (sp?) who sued University of Texas for being denied with a rather underwhelming application.
That’s the thing. It’s one thing for someone to be rejected from only the very best universities or to have a good-but-not-great resume and face rejection. But to have perfect grades, near-perfect test scores, multiple awards in coding competitions, a startup, and still get rejected by Cal Poly or UC Davis or Michigan or Wisconsin? It makes no sense and shows something is seriously wrong here.
(2) It's kind of unclear from the article, but is the argument that being hired by Google is evidence that he _should_ have been accepted by those schools? Or is that just an auxiliary detail?
Maybe everybody who's been denied employment at Google, and met all of Google's hiring requirements, should sue Google for nepotism, eh?
EDIT: I checked and it's still an impacted major at my alma mater, too.
(2) Yes, I think that is the argument, that Google was willing to hire based on merit while universities are running admission processes that discriminate against Asian students even when their claimed policy is to not discriminate. The lawsuit against the University of California is due to UC’s lack of transparency or responsiveness on investigations into this student’s rejection.
https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/profile/in/nanzhong
Re: the UC decisions, I hope this gets a fair investigation but I will note that I know multiple people who’ve been involved in university admissions who’ve all commented on how insanely competitive things are now at the top schools. Everyone got the message that they should major in CS over the last couple of decades and the programs mentioned in the news articles must get a hundred applicants for every open spot.
I’ve heard too many stories about turning down kids with perfect SATs, multiple AP 5s, great extracurriculars, etc. because they weren’t even the only graduate from their high school with those characteristics.
College admissions are a second-order planning process (IE, you have to consider whether the applicant is likely to accept your offer, if you forgo an offer to another candidate with lesser creds that was more likely to accept). See https://www.amazon.com/Gatekeepers-Admissions-Process-Premie... for some insight into the process.
What would that change? If you know how those companies hire, it’s not like his father would be allowed to even interview him, let alone hire him. You still have to make it through several interviews with other people.
Again, absolutely none of that is cheating - humans are just prone to thinking we’re far more rational than we actually are and there’s something like half a century of psychology and neuroscience studies showing that it’s both significant and requires effort to correct for.
Do we know that he was a top candidate though? Like, I know that sounds obtuse, because clearly he had some good scores, solid GPA, etc. But in a vacuum it's hard to disprove that there weren't 1000 other candidates with equally impressive stats.
We were given 4 fake students and told to admit one, waitlist one, and reject two.
I was a bit shocked at how many people rejected the student I thought was the most meritorious on the argument of "they're not going to accept our offer so we shouldn't reject the other students that might".
Competitive colleges get more near-perfect applicants than admission slots. Extra-curricular achievements are subjective, and admissions don't have much time to thoroughly review them. Ultimately, decisions must involve a lottery, so anyone whose not truly exceptional has a non-negligible possibility of being rejected from a university like MIT (or an employer like Google).
It may be that the combined chance of being rejected 16 times is incredibly small, but the independent chance for each college is not. Unlucky for him, but unless there's specific evidence, one of his rejections alone is exceptional (e.g. he applied to a non-competitive college that accepted every other applicant with similar GPA), or there's evidence that any admissions are biased against Asians in general, I don't think the case should have merit.
I like to believe that attending an especially prestigious undergraduate university doesn't benefit one much more in the long run than a less prestigious but competent one, and that the most ambitious people can succeed anywhere. At least for this teenager, being hired by Google at 19 is almost certainly far better for his goals and future than if he was rejected but accepted to any of the colleges. Since that acceptance also involved luck, he should be thankful.
> Stanley Zhong and his father Nan Zhong filed a new complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleging the University of California illegally engages in racial discrimination in its admissions process. The use of race was banned by California voters through Prop 209 in 1996 and affirmed in an unrelated case involving Harvard in 2023.
These institutions will tell you they aren't just there to provide boilerplate "I grind harder than everyone else" degrees, they go out of their way to be more than that. That's why their degrees are valued. In order do to this, they provide an enriched social environment that exposes students to more than just the top X people who were the best at grinding on test prep.
Someone could easily start a school that only accepts based on test score, nothing else. I wonder why nobody thinks that would be a valuable degree?