In November 1918 with Nankai funding he came to study at Grinnell College just one day after Nankai President Zhang Boling and three other prominent Chinese educators arrived on campus. A successful sportsman, Kuo had wanted to major in sports but decided to study biology instead while waiting for the resumption of sports programs shut down by World War I. At the annual Drake Relays in April 1920, he won third place in the half-mile run and competed in the one-mile event as well (SB 04/21/1920). That same month he participated in the track-and-field meet at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa as part of the Grinnell team (04/28/1920). 

Meanwhile Kuo fell in love with biology at Grinnell. The Grinnell College catalogue shows that he was awarded a bachelor’s degree in botany and zoology in July 1922, after some unspecified delays, though he had left for graduate studies in agriculture at the University of Illinois in 1920. In 1922 Kuo was hired as Professor of Biology at Peking Normal University. He also taught at Soochow University, Northwest University, and other institutions over the years. In 1980 he served on the Sport History Editorial Committee of the All-China Sports Federation. In 1981 Kuo passed away in Beijing. He had asked his family to donate the two gold medals he won at the Far East Games 66 years ago to the Chinese government.