This is an ostensibly true story.
Vijay Jojo Chokalingam, an East Indian (pictured above, before and after), wanted to become a doctor. But he didn’t have the GPA or the test scores. And so he shaved his head and trimmed his eyelashes. Then he (re)applied to medical school — this time as a black man.
He says — and, to judge from his before and after photos, there’s no doubt about it — his “change in appearance was so startling that my own fraternity brothers didn’t recognize me at first. I even joined the Organization of Black Students and started using my embarrassing middle name that I had hidden from all of my friends since I was a 9 years old. Vijay the Indian-American frat boy become Jojo the African American Affirmative Action applicant to medical school.”
The experience prompted him to write a book called Almost Black – The True Story Of An Indian American Who Got Into Medical School Pretending To Be An African American, and you may read more about it here on his website.