Hired by Google as L4 but rejected by top colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hold up. We all know many students accepted to CS at these colleges (not all of them, but many of them) with similar academic stats and without the addition of his coding and business accomolishments. There is something else going on here.

They all probably yield protected and thought someone else would take him.

I have a friend who’s son was accepted at Harvard and waitlisted at a SUNY. It’s all a giant crapshoot now. It’s ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stanley Zhong graduated from high school in June 2023. Starting in 2020, he built an e-signing startup (details below) that is featured in an Amazon Web Services case study. That led to multiple companies interviewing him for full-time jobs despite the slow IT job market. Shortly after he turned 18, Google hired him as an L4 software engineer, a position typically offered to candidates with multiple years of professional experience as well as a college degree.

In contrast, his college application results were underwhelming. He applied to the Computer Science programs. All but two colleges (listed below) rejected his application.

MIT
CMU
Stanford
UC Berkeley
UC LA
UC San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
UC Davis
California Polytechnic State University
Cornell University
Univ of Illinois
Univ of Michigan
Georgia Tech
Cal Tech
Univ of Wisconsin
Univ of Washington

Only Univ of Texas and Univ of Maryland accepted his application.

Here are some highlights of his application.

Advanced to the Google Code Jam Coding Contest semi-final.

Led his team to the 2nd place in MIT Battlecode''s global high school division (1st place in the US). Invited to MIT with expenses paid.

Created an e-signing startup (RabbitSign.com) that has grown to tens of thousands of users organically.

An Amazon Web Services Well-Architected Review concluded that it "is one of the most efficient and secure accounts" they have reviewed.

Amazon Web Services is publishing a case study featuring RabbitSign for its exemplary use of AWS Serverless and compliance services.

Designed, implemented and operated the web frontend, RESTful APIs, workflow orchestration, metrics and alerting, horizontal scaling, CDN, rate limiting, security hardening (including intrusion detection and DDoS protection), compliance monitoring, internationalization, and disaster recovery.

Passed multi-week whitebox pentest with no major security issues discovered.

Wrote comprehensive unit tests, continuous API Postman tests, and end-to-end Selenium tests.

Negotiated a 90% discount (worth $40K+) for compliance audits. After working with the auditors over several quarters, RabbitSign is now the world''s only provider of unlimited free SOC 2-, ISO 27001- and HIPAA-compliant e-signing.

Co-founded a non-profit that brings free coding lessons to kids in underserved communities. He recruited and built a volunteer team made of 20+ industry professionals, Stanford postdoc and high schoolers. Over 2 years, the team taught 500+ kids in California, Washington and Texas.

National Merit Scholarship finalist

SAT: 1590

GPA (UW/W): 3.97/4.42

He did this all by himself? Color me suspicious....
No parent in the industry?
No advisors/mentors?
No assistance with navigating how to negotiate contracts or how to set up a non-profit?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stanley Zhong graduated from high school in June 2023. Starting in 2020, he built an e-signing startup (details below) that is featured in an Amazon Web Services case study. That led to multiple companies interviewing him for full-time jobs despite the slow IT job market. Shortly after he turned 18, Google hired him as an L4 software engineer, a position typically offered to candidates with multiple years of professional experience as well as a college degree.

In contrast, his college application results were underwhelming. He applied to the Computer Science programs. All but two colleges (listed below) rejected his application.

MIT
CMU
Stanford
UC Berkeley
UC LA
UC San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
UC Davis
California Polytechnic State University
Cornell University
Univ of Illinois
Univ of Michigan
Georgia Tech
Cal Tech
Univ of Wisconsin
Univ of Washington

Only Univ of Texas and Univ of Maryland accepted his application.

Here are some highlights of his application.

Advanced to the Google Code Jam Coding Contest semi-final.

Led his team to the 2nd place in MIT Battlecode''s global high school division (1st place in the US). Invited to MIT with expenses paid.

Created an e-signing startup (RabbitSign.com) that has grown to tens of thousands of users organically.

An Amazon Web Services Well-Architected Review concluded that it "is one of the most efficient and secure accounts" they have reviewed.

Amazon Web Services is publishing a case study featuring RabbitSign for its exemplary use of AWS Serverless and compliance services.

Designed, implemented and operated the web frontend, RESTful APIs, workflow orchestration, metrics and alerting, horizontal scaling, CDN, rate limiting, security hardening (including intrusion detection and DDoS protection), compliance monitoring, internationalization, and disaster recovery.

Passed multi-week whitebox pentest with no major security issues discovered.

Wrote comprehensive unit tests, continuous API Postman tests, and end-to-end Selenium tests.

Negotiated a 90% discount (worth $40K+) for compliance audits. After working with the auditors over several quarters, RabbitSign is now the world''s only provider of unlimited free SOC 2-, ISO 27001- and HIPAA-compliant e-signing.

Co-founded a non-profit that brings free coding lessons to kids in underserved communities. He recruited and built a volunteer team made of 20+ industry professionals, Stanford postdoc and high schoolers. Over 2 years, the team taught 500+ kids in California, Washington and Texas.

National Merit Scholarship finalist

SAT: 1590

GPA (UW/W): 3.97/4.42

I absolutely believe this. Is he not Asian? If you are an Asian male or a white male, you are SOL at the top colleges, because colleges are not supposed to accept "too many" of those. If the applicant is a female that is not 100% Asian or 100% white, even if their GPA and test scores were not that strong, they would have been accepted into a STEM program at *all* of those schools. Sad but true.

BS. You have zero proof. You are just ASSuming.

[Anonymous]

Which college is he attending?

[Anonymous]

Doesn’t seem well rounded. Very one dimensional. All he does is computers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hold up. We all know many students accepted to CS at these colleges (not all of them, but many of them) with similar academic stats and without the addition of his coding and business accomolishments. There is something else going on here.

They all probably yield protected and thought someone else would take him.

I have a friend who’s son was accepted at Harvard and waitlisted at a SUNY. It’s all a giant crapshoot now. It’s ridiculous.

If yield protection, they should put him on waitlist, not directly rejection. It is also unlikely Stanford and MIT YP.

[Anonymous]

Most colleges don't use yield protection, but they do look beyond the numbers. GPA isn't the same as rigor. No idea about recommendations.

Just because someone is successful at something doesn't mean they're a good classmate/student.

[Anonymous]

Most CS academic programs are wildly out of step with industry. It’s two different worlds. This does not surprise me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IDK, maybe he didn't take his apps seriously.

That seems relative.

It could be that his essay was lackluster. Maybe his recs were not good?

IMO, college admissions does appear to be a crapshoot.

My DC is a CS major at UMD and knows someone with amazing stats and background, and they also got rejected to those schools, as did DC, and DC doesn't have that kind of high caliber background like this student or OP's example though their stats are higher than OP's example. So DC now doesn't feel as bad for being rejected at those schools knowing how such high stats with great background students also got rejected to those schools.

Oh well, that just means UMD will get stronger and stronger. Go Terps!

My kid knew a kid (UMC White) from school with a 1600 and many accomplishments that was rejected everywhere the kid applied (all top 30) except 1 place. Perplexed everyone until the kid admitted that they "phoned in" the apps...just churning each one out in an hour with little thought...because the kid thought the 1600 and various ECs would do the trick.

[Anonymous]

Are you his mom? Why do you have all of this personal information?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stanley Zhong graduated from high school in June 2023. Starting in 2020, he built an e-signing startup (details below) that is featured in an Amazon Web Services case study. That led to multiple companies interviewing him for full-time jobs despite the slow IT job market. Shortly after he turned 18, Google hired him as an L4 software engineer, a position typically offered to candidates with multiple years of professional experience as well as a college degree.

In contrast, his college application results were underwhelming. He applied to the Computer Science programs. All but two colleges (listed below) rejected his application.

MIT
CMU
Stanford
UC Berkeley
UC LA
UC San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
UC Davis
California Polytechnic State University
Cornell University
Univ of Illinois
Univ of Michigan
Georgia Tech
Cal Tech
Univ of Wisconsin
Univ of Washington

Only Univ of Texas and Univ of Maryland accepted his application.

Here are some highlights of his application.

Advanced to the Google Code Jam Coding Contest semi-final.

Led his team to the 2nd place in MIT Battlecode''s global high school division (1st place in the US). Invited to MIT with expenses paid.

Created an e-signing startup (RabbitSign.com) that has grown to tens of thousands of users organically.

An Amazon Web Services Well-Architected Review concluded that it "is one of the most efficient and secure accounts" they have reviewed.

Amazon Web Services is publishing a case study featuring RabbitSign for its exemplary use of AWS Serverless and compliance services.

Designed, implemented and operated the web frontend, RESTful APIs, workflow orchestration, metrics and alerting, horizontal scaling, CDN, rate limiting, security hardening (including intrusion detection and DDoS protection), compliance monitoring, internationalization, and disaster recovery.

Passed multi-week whitebox pentest with no major security issues discovered.

Wrote comprehensive unit tests, continuous API Postman tests, and end-to-end Selenium tests.

Negotiated a 90% discount (worth $40K+) for compliance audits. After working with the auditors over several quarters, RabbitSign is now the world''s only provider of unlimited free SOC 2-, ISO 27001- and HIPAA-compliant e-signing.

Co-founded a non-profit that brings free coding lessons to kids in underserved communities. He recruited and built a volunteer team made of 20+ industry professionals, Stanford postdoc and high schoolers. Over 2 years, the team taught 500+ kids in California, Washington and Texas.

National Merit Scholarship finalist

SAT: 1590

GPA (UW/W): 3.97/4.42

I absolutely believe this. Is he not Asian? If you are an Asian male or a white male, you are SOL at the top colleges, because colleges are not supposed to accept "too many" of those. If the applicant is a female that is not 100% Asian or 100% white, even if their GPA and test scores were not that strong, they would have been accepted into a STEM program at *all* of those schools. Sad but true.

BS. You have zero proof. You are just ASSuming.

If you think that, then you have not been involved in college admissions in the last few years, at all. Ask any female STEM applicant that is not 100% Asian or 100% white - then ask the Asian and white males STEM applicants.

ENORMOUS DIFFERENCE. You can deny it all you want, but those who know both groups, in recent years, know the truth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stanley Zhong graduated from high school in June 2023. Starting in 2020, he built an e-signing startup (details below) that is featured in an Amazon Web Services case study. That led to multiple companies interviewing him for full-time jobs despite the slow IT job market. Shortly after he turned 18, Google hired him as an L4 software engineer, a position typically offered to candidates with multiple years of professional experience as well as a college degree.

In contrast, his college application results were underwhelming. He applied to the Computer Science programs. All but two colleges (listed below) rejected his application.

MIT
CMU
Stanford
UC Berkeley
UC LA
UC San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
UC Davis
California Polytechnic State University
Cornell University
Univ of Illinois
Univ of Michigan
Georgia Tech
Cal Tech
Univ of Wisconsin
Univ of Washington

Only Univ of Texas and Univ of Maryland accepted his application.

Here are some highlights of his application.

Advanced to the Google Code Jam Coding Contest semi-final.

Led his team to the 2nd place in MIT Battlecode''s global high school division (1st place in the US). Invited to MIT with expenses paid.

Created an e-signing startup (RabbitSign.com) that has grown to tens of thousands of users organically.

An Amazon Web Services Well-Architected Review concluded that it "is one of the most efficient and secure accounts" they have reviewed.

Amazon Web Services is publishing a case study featuring RabbitSign for its exemplary use of AWS Serverless and compliance services.

Designed, implemented and operated the web frontend, RESTful APIs, workflow orchestration, metrics and alerting, horizontal scaling, CDN, rate limiting, security hardening (including intrusion detection and DDoS protection), compliance monitoring, internationalization, and disaster recovery.

Passed multi-week whitebox pentest with no major security issues discovered.

Wrote comprehensive unit tests, continuous API Postman tests, and end-to-end Selenium tests.

Negotiated a 90% discount (worth $40K+) for compliance audits. After working with the auditors over several quarters, RabbitSign is now the world''s only provider of unlimited free SOC 2-, ISO 27001- and HIPAA-compliant e-signing.

Co-founded a non-profit that brings free coding lessons to kids in underserved communities. He recruited and built a volunteer team made of 20+ industry professionals, Stanford postdoc and high schoolers. Over 2 years, the team taught 500+ kids in California, Washington and Texas.

National Merit Scholarship finalist

SAT: 1590

GPA (UW/W): 3.97/4.42

Something funky must be going on. Rejected from UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara? I realize the UC schools don't look at test scores, but he must have written garbage for the UC essays. I assume he is a Cal resident if he also applied to Cal Poly?

Actually, a wonder he was accepted at Texas since they accept so few from OOS.

[Anonymous]

Maybe colleges figured it was his tiger mom pushing him

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IDK, maybe he didn't take his apps seriously.

That seems relative.

It could be that his essay was lackluster. Maybe his recs were not good?

IMO, college admissions does appear to be a crapshoot.

My DC is a CS major at UMD and knows someone with amazing stats and background, and they also got rejected to those schools, as did DC, and DC doesn't have that kind of high caliber background like this student or OP's example though their stats are higher than OP's example. So DC now doesn't feel as bad for being rejected at those schools knowing how such high stats with great background students also got rejected to those schools.

Oh well, that just means UMD will get stronger and stronger. Go Terps!

My kid knew a kid (UMC White) from school with a 1600 and many accomplishments that was rejected everywhere the kid applied (all top 30) except 1 place. Perplexed everyone until the kid admitted that they "phoned in" the apps...just churning each one out in an hour with little thought...because the kid thought the 1600 and various ECs would do the trick.

It is not always the essays or recommendations to blame - sometimes the school needs certain demographics, especially if that school has a negative history. Many schools are actively seeking URM women in STEM - it is a known fact, but individual colleges will not admit this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most colleges don't use yield protection, but they do look beyond the numbers. GPA isn't the same as rigor. No idea about recommendations.

Just because someone is successful at something doesn't mean they're a good classmate/student.

You know nothing about yield protection, and how many colleges utilize it, because that information is not publicly available, for the most part