An Asian American teen whiz kid who had a 4.42 weighted grade-point average and a near perfect 1590 score on his SAT — yet was rejected by 16 colleges he applied to — has added to the list of universities he is suing for discrimination.
Stanley Zhong, 19, and his father, Nan Zhong, have sued the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, and Cornell University, three schools that rejected Stanley after he applied in the fall of 2023.
The trio of lawsuits, filed in late February and mid-March, are in addition to ones the Zhongs filed in mid-February against the University of California system and five UC schools that rejected Stanley’s application.
The lawsuits detail Stanley’s achievements as a high schooler, which also included developing an e-signing startup featured by Amazon Web Services, as well as “advancement to the Google Code Jam and Facebook Hacker Cup semifinals, 2nd place finish in the MIT Battlecode, and highest-level Presidential Volunteer Service Award.”
The complaints allege Stanley suffered “the loss of educational opportunities, emotional distress, and reputational damage.”
Nan Zhong said he believes the lawsuits can go the distance.
“Based on the lawyers these universities have retained, they seem to be taking the lawsuits very seriously,” Nan Zhong said in a recent telephone interview with The College Fix.
Zhong said the UC system has retained the large and international law firm of WilmerHale, and the University of Washington retained Robert McKenna, former Washington state attorney general, to combat the duo’s complaints.
“That is as big of a legal gun as you can get,” Nan Zhong told The Fix. “Apparently, they realized this case is not something they can easily dismiss.”
Stanley Zhong ended up taking a PhD-level software engineer job at Google out of high school. He was given a position that usually requires a PhD, his father said.
He said his son still works there and is quite happy, but the lawsuits are for other Asian-American students who might face the same dilemma.
“From my perspective, this is really important for my younger son, who is going to apply to college in a couple years, and this is something we need to do now for my grandkids,” he said.
Nan Zhong said the lawsuits have some strategy to them: California, Washington and Michigan all have very established state laws that specifically prohibit race-based decisions in college admissions.
In a statement to The College Fix, UW’s Director of Media Relations Dana Robinson Slote said that “UW stands behind its admissions process, and we have long recognized that our capacity is limited and we are not able to admit some very talented and capable applicants. We are reviewing the lawsuit and will likely have no additional comment while the legal process is ongoing.”
Kay Jarvis, director of public affairs for the University of Michigan, said in a statement to The Fix that the university does not comment on pending litigation.
Nan Zhong spelled out some of his legal strategy, and the use of AI to write his lawsuits, in a mid-April post on Heterodox STEM’s Substack.
“Our ‘legal team’ consists of ChatGPT and Gemini,” he wrote. “They did a fantastic job of drafting the legal complaints. For $20 a month, 24/7 access, and no conflict of interest to worry about, we can hardly expect more!”
“When the lawyer of one of the universities objected to the scope of our litigation hold notice, our AI-drafted response compelled them to back down and fully comply with our document retention request.”
Lawsuits:
University of California — (Google doc link)
University of Washington — (Google doc link)
University of Michigan — (Google doc link)
Cornell — (Google doc link)
Nan Zhong told The Fix he was disappointed all the campus student newspapers, except for at Cornell, have ignored his and his son’s story despite sending the editors copies of the lawsuit.
“All these campus newspapers do not seem to be interested,” he said.
The Zhongs list Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination, or SWORD, as an additional plaintiff and point out on the Substack op-ed: “While we have whistleblower reports regarding the secret use of race at each of the universities sued, we are actively collecting more for both student admissions and faculty hiring, whether anonymous or not.”
MORE: Teen hired by Google was rejected by 16 colleges. Now he’s suing for discrimination.
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A photo of Stanley Zhong / YouTube screenshot
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