Stanley Zhong was a close to good school applicant.
Out of the greater than two million youngsters who take the SAT yearly, he’s one in every of roughly 2,000 to attain a 1590 or increased.
His highschool GPA was a 4.42 on a 4.0 scale. He even had a suggestion in hand to work a PhD degree job at Google earlier than graduating highschool.
Stanley, who supposed to review laptop science, additionally managed his personal startup, e-document signature platform Rabbit-Signal, whereas nonetheless a excessive schooler.
By anybody’s expectations the Palo Alto, Calif., teen ought to have been Harvard or MIT certain. And but Stanley, now 19, was met with disappointment after disappointment in 2023 when school admissions letters began trickling in.
Stanley was rejected by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell College, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, College of Illinois, College of Michigan, College of Washington and College of Wisconsin.
Solely the College of Texas at Austin and the College of Maryland — with respective 31% and 44% admissions charges — 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 instructed The Submit.
“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.”
With simply 2 gives of admission out of 18 colleges, Nan grew to become satisfied that his whiz child should have been discriminated in opposition to — and determined to take the faculties who rejected his son to court docket.
“There’s nothing more un-American than this,” Nan stated of the alleged discrimination his son confronted. “I don’t really think [these schools] give a damn about the damage they’re doing to these kids.”
Asian American college students have lengthy gotten the quick finish of the stick with regards to affirmative motion. The Supreme Court docket outlawed affirmative motion in school admissions in June 2023, discovering that Asian college students have been systemically missed.
As a result of Stanley utilized for admissions shortly earlier than the ruling, the Zhongs determined to sue schools situated in states that had pre-existing legal guidelines prohibiting racial discrimination in admissions.
Affirmative motion has been banned at public universities in Stanley’s house state of California since 1996.
Up to now, the household has filed lawsuits in opposition to the College of California system and the College of Washington, alleging the faculties “[engaged] in racially discriminatory admissions practices that disadvantage highly qualified Asian-American applicants.”
“[Stanley’s admissions] results stand in stark contrast to his receipt of a full-time job offer from Google for a position requiring a PhD degree or equivalent practical experience,” the lawsuit claims. “Stanley’s experience is emblematic of a broader pattern of racial discrimination against highly qualified Asian-American applicants at UC.”
They’re in search of compensatory and punitive damages and “such other and further relief as [the] court deems just and proper.” The household additionally not too long ago filed one other go well with in opposition to the College of Michigan, which the court docket clerk is presently processing.
“In the Harvard [Supreme Court] case, the question was whether affirmative action is legal or not,” Nan defined. “Our case is a matter of enforcing the law and holding schools responsible. It’s great the Supreme Court ruled in that case, but I think the enforcement is going to be a lot harder than just declaring it unconstitutional.”
Many schools have been accused of exploiting loopholes to govern racial demographics of incoming lessons despite the Supreme Court docket’s ruling, usually artificially suppressing Asian American numbers.
Stanley determined to take up Google’s job supply and has been working as a full-time software program engineer since October. Google first tried to recruit him when he was simply 13 as a result of his on-line coding was so superior the corporate figured he have to be an grownup.
Although he hasn’t dominated out school sooner or later, he’s determined to step again from media consideration after going through blowback over his lawsuits on the web.
“We haven’t seen more cases like Stanley’s, because the kind of open hostility towards Asian students standing up for their rights is unbelievable,” his father stated.
Nan, an immigrant from China who additionally works as a software program engineer, additionally has a 16-year-old son and says he’s “very much worried about the prospect he’s facing” within the school admissions course of.
“My other son is part of the reason we’re fighting this battle,” he stated. “We’re doing this for other Asian kids, including my younger kid and my future grandkids.”
Nan is representing the household in court docket himself. He used synthetic intelligence to assist define the complaints and stated the lawsuits wouldn’t be potential with out AI.
“The reason we’re representing ourselves is not that we’d like to,” he stated. “Lawyers leaning left didn’t want to take the case. And then the lawyers on the right side think that the courts in California [and other states] are going to be too biased.”
He’s in search of two issues to assist construct his case: “More plaintiffs and whistleblowers [from inside the university system].”
Nan says what motivates him most is combating for the psychological well-being of different Asian American youngsters who really feel unmoored by rejection regardless of their tireless exhausting work.
“This really damages their mental health, creating a sense of helplessness and hopelessness,” he stated. “If you look at Stanley’s case as a reference point, even if you’re as good as somebody with a PhD degree, you still might not even get undergraduate admissions.”
