ANTI-ASIAN RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: Why was a brilliant kid rejected by the University of California? “Despite a 4.2 high school grade-point average, near-perfect SATs, and the fact that he founded a software company while still a high school sophomore, Stanley Zhong was rejected by admissions officers at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Davis, San Diego and Santa Barbara – every University of California campus he applied to. Just 18 at the time, the Palo Alto, California, native shook off the disappointment and immediately earned a prestigious job as a Google programmer. A year later, he hasn’t given up on his dream: he’d still like to go back to school and eventually earn a doctorate in computer science. To level the path to admissions, he’s suing the University of California system because, he says, race factored into his UC rejections.”