HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google.

College admissions decisions disappoint thousands of high-achieving students each year, but one Palo Alto teen’s story is catching the attention of Congress.

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

Despite earning 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT’s and founding his own e-signing startup RabbitSign in sophomore year, he was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to.

But shortly after the wave of rejections, he was offered a full-time software engineering role by Google, one of the world’s top tech companies. . . . Zhong’s story was brought up by a witness testifying at the House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing. The goal of the hearing was to consider how this summer’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions is shaping university policies, policies that confound Zhong and his father.

Everyone knows that if he’d been black instead of Asian with the same scores he would have been accepted everywhere. On the other hand, why should he waste 4 years in college when he can start work at a six-figure job out of high school, probably the same job he’d get with a BS in computer science?