A 19-year-old American genius boy who was offered Google Scouts sues for “racism” against prestigious universities

A teenage Asian boy in the U.S. has filed a lawsuit against some of the prestigious universities he applied for, calling it racist.

On the 3rd, the New York Post introduced the story of Stanley Jong, saying, “A genius boy who was offered a job at Google in high school but was rejected by 16 universities filed a lawsuit for discrimination.”

The media called him a “nearly perfect college applicant.” He received close to perfect score on the SAT, which is called the “American College Scholastic Ability Test,” and earned 4.42 in high school grade (4.0). He also runs a startup company that creates electronic document signing platforms, and was offered a doctoral job at Google before graduating from high school.

With his high specification, Stanley had to taste the bitter taste of failure in college admission. He applied to 16 universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), UCLA, California Institute of Technology (California), Stanford and UC Berkeley, but all of them failed. He could only get acceptance letters from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Maryland.

Not only Stanley but also his family were surprised by the results. ” I’ve heard rumors that Asian students should meet higher standards in college, but I thought it was only a rumor,” Stanley’s father, Nanjong, said. “But I was puzzled by a series of failures. Surprise has turned into frustration and anger.”

Seeing that his son had not received his certificate of acceptance because he was of Asian descent, Nan decided to file lawsuits against the schools that issued rejection letters. He said, “Nothing could be more un-American. I don’t think these schools care less about the harm they are doing to children.”

The New York Post said, “Asian-American students have long been at a disadvantage when it comes to ‘affirmative action’ (a policy that favors minorities when entering college).” He also mentioned that the Supreme Court ruled the policy unconstitutional in June 2023. The policy was introduced in 1961 under the John F. Kennedy administration to ease racial discrimination. However, while black and Latino people had more opportunities there, criticism was raised that white and Asian people were subjected to reverse discrimination, such as not being able to enter even if they had good grades.

Stanley, however, reportedly submitted his application before the Supreme Court’s ruling came out. As a result, Nan decided to file a lawsuit against the university, which has a state law prohibiting racism in the admissions process. The University of California and the University of Washington are currently suing.

“The rejection contrasts with Stanley’s offer of a PhD or hands-on experience from Google,” Nan said in the complaint. “What my son has experienced shows a wide range of racist patterns for highly qualified Asian American applicants.” He is demanding punitive damages and “further relief measures that the court considers fair and appropriate.”

Meanwhile, Stanley has been working as a software engineer at Google since October last year. “Google first tried to recruit Stanley when he was 13 years old. It was because he had excellent coding skills,” the media reported.

JENNIFER KIM

US ASIA JOURNAL