<p>So I'm in a very complicated situation right now (well, at least that's what I think).
I immigrated from South Korea when I was in fifth grade, and my permanent residence card and my social security card says that my name is Dong Ho Kim.
But I just used the name Andrew for most of my middle school and high school activities cause Andrew is more familiar-sounding than Dong Ho.
Recently, I realized I need to start using my legal name more, so I have been using the name Dongho instead of Andrew in all of my high school activities.
HOWEVER, the legal documents say that my name is Dong Ho, but on my high school transcript, my name is denoted as Dongho (Andrew) Kim without the space between "Dong" and "Ho".
I also placed at state for piano and debate this year, and my name on the list is also "Dongho (Andrew) Kim."
Do you think this will hugely affect my admission into colleges? I'm mostly afraid that colleges might invalidate everything I've been working on because of the inconsistency in my name.</p>
<p>If you guys could tell me what course of action I can take, that would be awesome!
I'm just very worried right now. I know that colleges could probably look over the name inconsistency, but still.... I feel like I screwed up big time :(.</p>
<p>Just for clarification, I put the name “Andrew” in parenthesis cause it’s not really my middle name but I still include it nonetheless because it shows that I am both Dongho and Andrew.</p>
<p>Dong Ho: pretend you’re the file reader at college X. Your job is to find reasons not to admit applicants. A clerical issue like what you’ve described passes your desk. What would you do? Delete the file? Ask for it to be shredded immediately? Is this how you think adults perform their jobs?</p>
<p>Relax. Please</p>
<p>“I’m mostly afraid that colleges might invalidate everything I’ve been working on because of the inconsistency in my name.”</p>
<p>You really think this or are you just being dramatic? I hope for the latter because the first course is absent of any common sense</p>
<p>You’ll be perfectly fine. There are millions of students out there with interesting name situations. I think admissions people can figure this out.</p>
<p>While I agree that this is a non-issue for college applications, I think it would make sense to ask your high school to correct your records. Admissions people will surely be able to deal with this, but you never know what kind of doofus bureaucrat you may have to deal with someday on some matter you can’t even anticipate now–so fix what you can.</p>