Stanley Zhong was a near perfect college applicant.
Out of the more than two million kids who take the SAT annually, he’s one of roughly 2,000 to
score a 1590 or higher.
His high school GPA was a 4.42 on a 4.0 scale. He even had an offer in hand to work a PhD level job at Google
before graduating high school.
Stanley, who intended to study computer science, also
managed his own startup, e-document signature platform Rabbit-Sign, while still a high schooler.
By anyone’s expectations the Palo Alto, Calif., teen should have been Harvard or MIT bound. And yet Stanley, now 19, was met with disappointment after disappointment in 2023 when college admissions letters started trickling in.
Stanley was rejected by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell University, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin.
Only the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Maryland — with respective 31% and 44% admissions rates — accepted him. Stanley’s father, Nan Zhong, was astounded.
“I did hear that Asians seem to be facing a higher bar when it comes to college admissions, but I thought maybe it’s an urban legend,” Nan told The Post.
“But then when the rejections rolled in one after another, I was dumbfounded. What started with surprise turned into frustration and then finally it turned into anger.”
nypost.com
