Student Turned Google Engineer Who Was Rejected by 16 Colleges Uses AI to Sue Them
“the family remains convinced racial discrimination played a role in those decisions”
This is so perfect. At this point, does this kid even need college?
ABC 7 in California reports:
Google engineer rejected by 16 colleges uses AI to sue universities for racial discrimination
A father in Palo Alto, California, who has filed multiple lawsuits against major university systems over his son’s college rejections, says artificial intelligence has become the key to pursuing the cases after no law firm agreed to represent them.
The legal fight stems from a 2023 story by our sister station ABC7 News in San Francisco about Stanley Zhong, a then 18-year-old Gunn High School student with a 4.4 GPA and a near-perfect 1590 SAT score who was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to. Despite the rejections, he was later hired as a software engineer at Google.
Two and a half years later, his father, Nan Zhong, says the family remains convinced racial discrimination played a role in those decisions. He spoke exclusively with ABC7 News anchor Kristen Sze.
Zhong said Stanley, now 21, is happy and doing well in his job at Google. “In 2025, he received an outstanding impact performance rating, which is higher than majority of the Google engineers,” he said.
Zhong said the family spent a year in discussions with University of California officials after Stanley’s rejections, but nothing changed. He said the turning point came when a UC admissions director emailed him, writing that his allegation of racial discrimination was unfounded because California law bans the practice.
“When I got that line, I kept scratching my head,” Zhong said. “They’re saying there cannot be any noncompliance if there’s a law banning it, but we’re exactly accusing them of breaking the law secretly. So that is the point where I realized there’s nothing we can achieve by having a conversation with them.”
Zhong said conversations with state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom also went nowhere, prompting the family to sue the University of California, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Cornell University.
He said they struggled to find legal representation. “We’ve been talking to local law firms, national law firms. By my account, we probably talked to dozens of legal organizations and law firms. None of them took it,” Zhong said. With statutes of limitation approaching, he said the family decided to represent themselves.
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Comments
A man who represents himself has a fool for a client. Why wouldn’t anyone take the case?
He sounds brighter than anything the TDS ABA could offer.
Heinlein noted that “Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge, the more likely they are to think so.” Let’s hope this kid is an exception.
He had to file to beat the statute. I’m rooting for him.
Complete speculation, but I bet that one of the reasons no one took his case is that he got into 2 of the colleges. I imagine all were considered “good schools”. He will have a hard time showing damages considering those acceptances (and he always works for Google now).
I just hope he can find a way because they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this. I have a feeling he won’t be able to make more headway without a good legal team. AI is not going to be able to sift through the subtleties of the legalese and robo-litigate this.
If he can manage to get past the dreaded motion to dismiss hearing, then I imagine his fortunes on good representation will change dramatically (truly, a vulturous profession)
AI tells me what I want to hear, and backs it up with links that prove the opposite.
“writing that his allegation of racial discrimination was unfounded because California law bans the practice.”
Hahaha! It can’t happen, because it’s illegal! In Commiefornia, yet!!!
Ya wanna bet on what the idiot in charge of admissions at U of CA voted for in the 2024 Presidential election?
So long as all citations have been carefully checked by hand to make sure they exist and say what they’re cited as saying. Too many actual lawyers have got in deep excrement by filing AI-written briefs without checking them.
Elite colleges have much lower acceptance rates today than they did several generations back, because they get more applications today. “Good school” mania much higher today. Nonetheless, even back then elite colleges admitted a small minority of applicants, and not every admissions decision seemed sensible.
There was a girl from my high school, a year older than me, who was a straight A student, had a job, was a Merit Finalist (top 0.5 %), with a number of AP courses. She was on the debate team and in drama club, among other activities. She applied to 4-5 Seven Sisters schools (Radcliffe, Smith, etc.). All rejected her.
She ended up going to a state university in flyover country, Then to medical school. Didn’t need the elite school degree to do well in life.
I wish him luck in the lawsuit. When schools can admit only 5 percent of applicants, each admissions decision will seem arbitrary. A lottery system doesn’t sound like such a bad system to me.
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