Asian teen rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google, files discrimination lawsuit
abc7news.com
abc7news.com
> 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?
(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.
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.
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.
EDIT: I checked and it's still an impacted major at my alma mater, too.
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?