This article was produced as part of the New York Jewish Week’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around New York City to report on issues that affect their lives.

“Is Waner too Jewish-sounding?” I blurted out last year during my family’s regular Shabbat dinner. Tension filled the room. My parents didn’t answer. My brother looked at me. The silence in the room said enough.

As we sat in silence, I realized I had just said aloud something that I had never considered: how my identity as a Korean Jew might work against me in the college admissions process.

We were talking about college applications and how applicants are evaluated. Following the 2023 Supreme Court ruling banning race-conscious admissions, college essays — especially identity essays — became one of the main ways applicants can talk about how their race or culture has shaped them.

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........

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