He was rejected by 16 colleges, and Google invited him to work: the incredible story of a guy from California

College admissions decisions disappoint thousands of high-achieving students each year, but the story of one Northern California teen has caught the attention of Congress. What is it about - the publication told NBC7NY.

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Stanley Zhong, 18, is a 2023 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto.

Despite earning a GPA of 3,97 (unweighted) and 4,42 (weighted), scoring 1590 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT, and launching his own electronic signature company, RabbitSign, in his sophomore year, he was rejected at 16 of the 18 colleges he applied to.

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But recently Zhong was hired by Google. He started his new job just this week. He recently appeared on ABC7 News' "Getting Answers" with his father Nan Zhong and shared his incredible journey.

He described how he felt when he received rejection letters from colleges.

“Some of them were expected, of course, like Stanford or MIT. But I really thought I had a good chance of getting into community colleges, and it turns out I didn’t,” he noted.

But soon after a wave of rejections, he was offered a position as a software engineer at Google, one of the world's leading technology companies.

On September 28, Jeong's story was raised by a witness testifying at a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing. The purpose of the hearing was to examine how a Supreme Court decision this summer banning affirmative action in college admissions is shaping university policies that have baffled Jeong and his father.

Zhong admits that admissions to elite colleges is difficult and his cohort of computer science applicants in Silicon Valley is highly competitive, so he was surprised.

He was rejected 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 candidates were: the University of Texas and the University of Maryland.

College admissions experts often tell applicants that schools like MIT and Stanford, which admit less than 5% of students, are within the realm of possibility for almost anyone, but Zhong was rejected even by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where the GPA of half the students engineering specialties is 4,13-4,25.

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His father shared the story in some parent chat rooms and blogs, and it gained widespread publicity amid a national debate about admissions to elite colleges. Recognizing that Zhong may have just been unusually unlucky, his family says they are sharing his story to spark discussion about how to make college admissions more transparent.

As for the 18-year-old Google software engineer, he decided to go to the University of Texas, but has postponed this decision for now after receiving a job offer at Google.

As for whether he will still study in college, the young man says that perhaps yes. For now, Zhong is enjoying life not on campus, but on the Google campus.

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