Vijay Chokal-Ingam’s claim to fame was initially the fact that he’s the brother of The Office and The Mindy Project star Mindy Kaling, but he’s recently made headlines on his own by controversially revealing he lied about his race in order to get into medical school. Chokal-Ingam posted on his website “Almost Black” this week that despite sharing his famous sister’s Indian heritage, he claimed to be black on medical school applications after a number of schools put him on the wait-list.

During his junior year of college, Chokal-Ingam worried that he didn’t have the grades or test scores to get into medical school as an Indian-American, and his fears were realized when he found himself wait-listed at University of Pennsylvania, Washington University and Mt. Sinai. After discovering that admission standards for certain minorities under affirmative action were “less stringent,” he began to apply as African-American and altered his appearance accordingly.

“I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied to medical school as a black man. My 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,” revealed Chokal-Ingam, who then quickly began receiving invitations to interviews and acceptance letters from prestigious medical programs including Columbia University, Cornell University, George Washington University, and Vanderbilt University.

While Chokal-Ingam is estranged from Mindy Kaling, he hopes his controversial reveal and upcoming book Almost Black: The True Story of an Indian American Who Got Into Medical School Posing as an African American won’t affect his sister’s reputation.

“I love my sister to death,” Chokal-Ingam told the New York Post. “She says this will bring shame on the family.”