At the same time, Jewish and Asian students have raised concerns that those identities could work against them. Some Asian applicants worry they will be stereotyped as being academically strong but lacking creativity or individuality, while some Jewish applicants worry they will be seen as privileged, overrepresented or less in need of consideration.

To date, my Jewishness had been the most stable part of my identity.

My mother is Korean and my father is Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish. Both identities have shaped me, yet each seemed loaded with its own risks and opportunities.

My family celebrates Shabbat every Friday night and belongs to Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue on the Upper West Side.

At the same time, when I was with my extended Korean family, I was often subtly or directly reminded that I was not fully Korean, therefore placing me in a situation where my Jewish identity felt more visible. But in other parts of my life, especially at school, the dynamic flipped and I was usually categorized as Korean before I could explain anything else.

College admissions made the way I navigated those identities feel strategic. The end of affirmative action changed how Asian applicants thought about discussing race, while the rise in campus antisemitism after Oct. 7 left many Jewish students wondering how to present their identity.

For the first time in my life, I found myself asking: When you belong to more than one community, how do you decide which part of yourself becomes the story?

Other students I spoke with described working through similar questions, though the answers were not always the same.

A Chinese Jewish high school senior from the suburbs of New York City who will attend Wesleyan University this fall described her approach. (She asked not to be named because she considers the information she shared personal.) Growing up in a predominantly white suburb with a large Jewish population, she often felt more connected to her Jewish identity because it had a stronger presence in her daily life.

“It definitely depended on the setting,” she told me. “I’ve always felt I could connect with my Jewish side a little more because there’s more of a presence of synagogues than Chinese spaces.”

The end of affirmative action made her reconsider how to discuss culture in her application.

“The whole part about affirmative action shifted the narrative of what you should say and what you shouldn’t say,” she said. “I wasn’t entirely sure how to approach it.”

At first, she considered writing about her multicultural background, but after being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, she decided to focus her main essay on how the illness has changed her life and perspective.

Even so, she said she never felt that important parts of her identity should be hidden.

“A lot of people were told this will damage your application if you mention your cultural experiences,” she said. “But I feel you can’t hide something that’s part of you.”

Listening to her, I was struck by how differently she approached the same question I had spent months wrestling with. While I was worried about which identity should take center stage, she seemed less concerned with choosing between identities and more focused on presenting the experiences that mattered to her most.

So too did Noa Fay, a Black Jewish student who graduated from Columbia University in 2025. She applied before the recent shift in admissions policy and campus climate. At the time, she did not feel pressured to choose between identities.

“It was common knowledge at the time that these universities appreciated people like me,” she said. “Mixed people and people who represented racial diversity.”

Fay chose not to center her main essay on identity. Instead she used the shorter supplemental responses to present different parts of her background and tried “to talk about them all evenly.” She believed that her identities could strengthen her application rather than work against it.

That confidence took a turn while she was a student at Columbia University during the protests following the war in Israel.

“Before Oct. 7, I thought that every one of those identities was equally appreciated,” she said. “After, people expressed openly how much they disliked the Jewish identity.”

Looking back, she sees the admissions process differently and believes students today face a harder environment, but she still advises them not to hide.

“Don’t downplay your Judaism because certain places won’t like it,” she said. “If there’s a question that asks about it, don’t hide it.”

Sam, a college counselor who works with high school students from public and private schools across the United States, told me that he has noticed more anxiety around identity since the end of affirmative action. (Sam asked to be identified only by his first name and requested that his employer not be named because his company’s policy restricts employees from speaking publicly about admissions matters.) Students often feel that they need to connect their background to a specific hardship, he said, instead of allowing their identity to come through naturally in their writing.

“I see many applicants trying to guess what colleges want to hear, which can make their writing feel a bit forced,” he said.

When advising students with multiple identities, Sam tells them not to fit every part of themselves into one essay. Instead, they should focus on the experience that has most shaped their daily life or future goals. He also said students should not hide an important identity because they fear it could hurt their chances.

“Sometimes the absolute best essays explore the tension or the beauty of living between two different worlds,” he said. “They do not have to choose just one.”

Sam’s answer took me back to the question I asked at Shabbat dinner. At the time, I thought I had to decide which part of my identity would be safest to present to an admissions officer, but the people I spoke to helped me see that identity does not have to be presented as a choice between individual categories.

My last name may cause someone to see me as Jewish, while my appearance may cause someone to see me as Korean first, but each identity alone cannot tell the full story of who I am. Together these identities make up who I am.

I still do not know exactly what I will write when I apply to college, or how an admissions officer will interpret it, but I do know that I do not want fear to be a deciding factor on which part of my identity I include. The question is no longer whether Waner sounds too Jewish, but how I can tell the story of the whole person behind the name.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NYJW or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.