Hired by Google as L4 but rejected by top colleges

[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.

dp.. the name in OP's post sounds Asian.

-signed an Asian

[Anonymous]

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

are you kidding? A lot of kids who get in are one dimensional in the sense that they are super accomplished in that one area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:maybe they thought he would drop out.

+1!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:maybe they thought he would drop out.

+1!

idk.. lots of kids with super high stats and accomplishments don't get in, either. I don't think they think all of those kids would drop out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

are you kidding? A lot of kids who get in are one dimensional in the sense that they are super accomplished in that one area.

DP here. Some parents of applicants like to try to compare "pointy" applicants vs. (what the parents think is) "well rounded" applicants - only the college knows for sure, what it needs, based on whom they have accepted that year, to date. Of course, parents would have no way of knowing that, unless they are literally on the admissions team for that particular college in that particular year.

Ultimately, what matters, is the demographic that the school needs. Again, there is o way to gauge this while admissions are happening, unless you are in a professional position to know ie: not a professor, but someone high up in admissions, which most or all of us are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

are you kidding? A lot of kids who get in are one dimensional in the sense that they are super accomplished in that one area.

DP here. Some parents of applicants like to try to compare "pointy" applicants vs. (what the parents think is) "well rounded" applicants - only the college knows for sure, what it needs, based on whom they have accepted that year, to date. Of course, parents would have no way of knowing that, unless they are literally on the admissions team for that particular college in that particular year.

Ultimately, what matters, is the demographic that the school needs. Again, there is o way to gauge this while admissions are happening, unless you are in a professional position to know ie: not a professor, but someone high up in admissions, which most or all of us are not.

*no way

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:maybe they thought he would drop out.

+1!

Drop out as Bill Gates or Zuckerberg? How much $$$ have they donated to harvard? Why any school would reject someone potentially could donate that money?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:maybe they thought he would drop out.

+1!

idk.. lots of kids with super high stats and accomplishments don't get in, either. I don't think they think all of those kids would drop out.

Agree. Many colleges do yield protect, even though they do not admit that to the applicant parents.

[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.

Lol yes that makes sense! There are too many there so none get in?

[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.

Lol yes that makes sense! There are too many there so none get in?

Your interpretation makes zero sense, and that is not what was written. Most top colleges are 60/40 women/men, right now.

[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

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?

Holy you know what! You are an idiot who would ask a high school graduate, “what? You got all these grades all by yourself? No teachers and no classes? Did you self-study?” What a fool you are.

[Anonymous]

Is he fun to hang out with? Colleges care about stuff like that as they are trying to build a community

[Anonymous]

I’m not saying that this kid shouldn’t have gotten into these schools, but if you Google him you’ll see he’s from Palo Alto and I would be shocked if at least one of his parents wasn’t already in the tech industry. He just randomly thought of an e-signing service? For fun? The website is VERY professional. I have no doubt the kid is a good coder if he got that far in the Google code jam. But I also highly doubt that’s all in some vacuum.
https://www.rabbitsign.com/

This is where kids in his high school went to school.
https://gunn.pausd.org/campus-life/college-career-center/college-matriculation-summary

But I admit that even if he did have help, he did 1000 times more than my kid in high school!

[Anonymous]

Wow. Looking at where his classmates got in. No wonder. That’s who he was competing against.

[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.

Lol yes that makes sense! There are too many there so none get in?

No, there are too many qualified applicants from one community, so they look for reasons to reject. Too few qualified applicants from another community, so they'll look for reasons to admit.

This kids apps were probably sloppy, and if he doesn't communicate his accomplishments well, no one is going to dig for a reason to admit an Asian male.