His grade point average was 4.42. His SAT score was 1590. Right out of high school, he was hired as a software engineer.
It wasn’t good enough. In the words of The College Fix, this super-smart kid was “perfect on paper but rejected due to his ethnicity” — by 16 out of the 18 colleges to which he had applied, including five University of California schools.
By then, Stanley had already proved his mettle as a programmer by designing an alternative to DocuSign called RabbitSign. According to Amazon’s Well-Architected Review, RabbitSign was “one of the most efficient and secure accounts” that it had ever seen. Amazon highlighted Stanley’s work in a case study.
After Google engineers assessed his skills, the company gave Stanley a job offer in 2023 — beating Amazon to the punch. He had just turned 18.
This kind of recognition of Mr. Zhong’s abilities probably made it a little easier to cope with the flood of rejections of his college applications. He obviously does not need a college degree to succeed. But he’s not just putting all that nonsense behind him. He and his dad, Nan Zhong, are suing the University of California for their racially discriminatory — and illegal — admissions policies.
The fight is for Stanley but not just Stanley, says his father, who reports on the case at the SWORD website. SWORD stands for Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination.
“What we’re trying to get out of this is a fair treatment of Asian applicants. Including my other kids and my future grandkids.”
And ours.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)