US teen, rejected from 16 out of 18 colleges, hired by Google as software engineer

Stanley Zhong was hired by Google as a software engineer and has started his new job this week.

A teen from United States, who was rejected by 16 colleges including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon and Caltech, among others, was hired by tech giant Google.

Stanley Zhong, 18, from Palo Alto, graduated from Gunn High School this year. He then went on to score 1590 out of 1600 on his Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and even started his own startup called RabbitSign in his sophomore year.

However, he was hired by Google as a software engineer and has started his new job this week, according to ABC30. He was only accepted by University of Texas and University of Maryland.

Zhong decided to enroll at the University of Texas but that was put on hold after he got a job offer at Google.

His father shared his story on some parent chat groups and blogs and since then it has gone viral, amid the national conversation on elite college admissions, ABC30 said.

His parents, however, acknowledge the fact that Zhong might have been extraordinarily unlucky, but they are still sharing his story o spark conversation about making college admissions more transparent.

As for college, it is still on the cards but Zhong says maybe. Right now, he is enjoying his life on a Google campus instead of a college campus.