Hacker News Reader

Comment by imack | Hacker News Reader

Being a Waterloo alum working in Vancouver I'm just used to this ratio and I guess I've just adapted to the fact that its being 'normal' for 30-40% of my colleagues to be asian. But whenever I wonder if I should worry about the fate of my entitled WASPish brothers being locked out of certain programs, I just remember a great line from a recent 30 Rock:

"The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college, innovates things, the third generation...snowboards and takes improv classes".

Soon enough, there will be asian students who take improv classes who's parent's will bitch about their school spots being taken by super-students from Elbonia

View on HN

I'm a UofT student, and it's the same here. There's nothing particularly bothersome about having a lot of students from Korea and China. There's not even really much to get used to. Yeah, there are asians. So what?

The parents in the article claim that the asian students beat them out, but honestly, it was really easy to get into this university. I had terrible grades in my first two years of high school, and for the most part I was rejected by (good) US colleges (probably also because I didn't have my green card). I was even forced to apply later than students in Canada, because I did not go to an Ontario high school and had to fill in a different form with a later submission date. All these things would seem to be disadvantages, and I didn't figure on getting accepted at all. And yet I got into UofT (and Waterloo). It's remarkably easy to get into a university like this -- possibly because you're only allowed to apply to three Ontario universities -- and I don't buy the parents' arguments at all. More likely their kids got terrible grades, and that's nobody else's fault.

Honestly I can't believe we're even having this discussion. The last time I heard about fears of Chinese immigration was in history class.

  The last time I heard about fears of Chinese immigration was in history class.

Expect a lot more of it if the economy stays in the toilet.

I'm far more worried about Chinese emigration. It used to be that Chinese students came to Canadian universities and then start companies like ATI. Now they come to Canadian universities and go back to China or Taiwan and start companies.

This is more of an interesting concern, especially considering how much money Canada spends getting students in. I don't know the numbers for emigration, though. Have any figures?

It's possible that they still stay here, but don't start companies like ATI anymore. Being anonymous employee #5761 at ATI is cool too.

That is an excellent point. I can't see a lot of my Asian friends driving their kids nearly as hard as their parents have driven them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com