Applying to college was one of the most difficult experiences of high school. Putting forth your best qualities in an application is not only strenuous, it is the match that lights a fire of self-doubt, extensive self-analysis, and questioning of self-worth. Working on my application, I knew I was presenting a refined version of myself. While I wasn’t exactly hiding who I was, it certainly wasn’t necessary to list “Binge Watching 30 Rock” in the activities section of my Common App. Other parts of the application were not as simple.

When it became time for me to start thinking about college, I began to hear the stories. My mother whispering on the phone with my uncle, whose neighbor’s son, captain of his school’s water polo team, 1600 on the SAT, editor of the school newspaper, had not gotten into a single elite university. This was one of many examples my mother would recount on our car rides home. “It’s the biggest mistake to indicate your race when you’re an Asian student applying to college,” she would tell me. Because I was only half Korean, I thought I could hide behind my biracial identity, my hyphenated last name acting as an ethnically ambiguous curtain to cover my “Asianness.”

When I told my other Asian friends I was planning on not revealing my race, they shared the same sentiment. We were applying to college at the same time evidence from the Harvard affirmative action case was being released that the university had possibly discriminated against Asian American applicants. While this information provoked anger among Asians across the country, most families with children applying to college were fearful. The presumption of discrimination had become more than a collection of horror stories like the ones my mother had told me.

I consulted a family friend, a former college admissions officer, about whether or not I should indicate my race. His response was defensive. He argued that the “perfect applicants” like the ones I had heard about were not always ideal and hinted that their essays and interviews were a significant hindrance to their applications. I was experiencing first hand the racial implications directed towards Asians, revealing they were stereotyped to be high achieving yet uncharismatic in their college admissions applications.

He adamantly pushed me to indicate my race, arguing that the sources of low success for some Asian applicants didn’t apply to me. You’re not pre-med, you don’t want to major in bio, you don’t play the violin. There are sea of Asian applicants with these qualities, he argued, and colleges can only take so many, even if they have high test scores and GPAs. I was stunned. Someone I came to for guidance, a person of color no less, had made generalizations about part of my racial identity, and he was not alone with this attitude among others in his field.

The issue of affirmative action is a great source of tension within my community. While many feel that the stereotypes held against Asians aren’t nearly as severe as those held against other racial minorities, is that really enough to invalidate discrimination towards Asians? I, along with most Asian students within my high school, understand the necessity of policies like affirmative action, yet feel the strain of the needs of individuals who share my ethnicity. Affirmative action is a necessary policy not only in higher education, but in the public and private sectors. Many Asians believe that they can’t oppose discrimination against them in the college admissions process without being misperceived as opposing affirmative action.

Nearing the end of my college application process, I chose to reveal my Asian background rather than succumb to a system that convinced me I should hide something I was truly proud of. Throughout my life I have embraced my biracial identity and felt that if a college could not look beyond my ethnicity as a true indication of who I am as a person, then that college wouldn’t be a place where I would be valued for my authentic self. I recognize that this was my individual response. However, I ask my Asian peers to be proud of our ethnicity and embrace our individuality. We must look to one another to correct an unjust system and oppose discrimination against Asians, all the while supporting affirmative action and being faithful allies to other people of color.