In 1994, Ong moved to New York where he received critical acclaim for his plays. He was praised by Robert Brustein, the artistic director of the American Repertory Theater and one of the most esteemed figures of the American stage. In 1997, at age twenty-nine, Ong was one of twenty-three winners of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowships; his grant was $200,000. Ong said in an interview with the Washington Post's Lonnae O'Neal Parker, "I hope this MacArthur Fellowship demonstrates the importance of self-determination and the hunger for improvement for people of generation. I didn't take being a [high-school] dropout as a measure of my intelligence or as a harbinger of my future."