Hun Loo “Lincoln” Gong, a self-made billionaire who designed the first chip that enabled laptops to automatically read both Apple and PC software in Chinese and English, was rejected from Harvard in 1981.
He has never forgotten that, nor the fact that it’s impossibly difficult for Asian Americans to get beyond the limitations of top institutions with increasingly high percentages of Asian American students.
“Schools just don’t want to go beyond 30-40 percent Asian,” said Gong. “It’s true for private schools like Harvard or even public schools like UC Berkeley. But think what kind of student body you can have with all those Asian American rejects.”
That’s when the light went off in Gong’s head.
“I never forgot when I was rejected from Harvard, I got a scholarship to attend Lincoln University in Pennsylvania,” Gong said. He didn’t realize it was a historically black school at the time, but applied because his immigrant father would only let him go to a school named after the family hero.
At Lincoln, Gong learned about the purpose of historically black universities, and how they served a real need when blacks were excluded from colleges before the Civil War.
“When you think of it, the exclusion of top Asian American immigrants now is just like it was for blacks back then,” Gong said. “Where are we going to get the best education if we get shut out of the top schools?”
