A high school graduate with an exceptional academic record and a successful tech startup faced rejection from multiple colleges, only to land a job at Google. Stanley Zhong, a 2023 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, was shocked when he received rejection letters from 14 out of 18 colleges and universities he had applied to. Despite having a stellar 3.96 GPA and a near perfect SAT score of 1590, Zhong was denied admission to top schools like Stanford and state schools including UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and Cal Poly.
Zhong expressed his frustration at the lack of feedback provided by the admissions offices regarding their decision-making. He believed that students deserved transparency in college admissions and reached out to the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) for support. AACE, an organization advocating for Asian-American children’s education rights, raised Zhong’s case at a House Committee hearing on race-based college admissions decisions.
Undeterred by the rejections, Zhong decided to attend the University of Texas at Austin, which was one of the schools that offered him admission. In addition, he took a chance and applied for a software engineer position at Google, even though he didn’t have a college degree. To his surprise, Zhong was hired as a software development engineer, proving that a college degree is not always a requirement for certain roles at Google.
While college is still an option for Zhong in the future, he plans to focus on his job at Google for now. He acknowledges the value of higher education in computer science but believes that much of the knowledge can also be obtained online. However, Zhong acknowledges the social and networking aspects of college, which he sees as beneficial. He will reassess his decision to attend college in 2024 based on his contributions at Google and personal growth.
