Emma Sulkowicz (born 1992),[7] of Chinese, Japanese and Jewish descent, is the daughter of Sandra Leong and Kerry Sulkowicz, psychiatrists from Manhattan. She attended Dalton School on the Upper East Side, where she was an A student and competitive fencer. In 2011 she began her undergraduate studies at Columbia University, where she joined the Alpha Delta Phi Society. After planning to major in mechanical physics, she chose visual arts instead.[8]