Money WhizDom: Start now to taste success early

Adhvith Dhuddu, CT Regular Columnist

Tuesday, October 23; 9:55 PM

Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Michael Dell have something besides an abundance of wealth in common. They identified and pursued their passion and, most importantly, started early in life. Whether it's investing, entrepreneurship or even a full-time job, excelling early will put you on a path to financial success and early retirement.

A university environment is an ideal place to start. Here you possess something very precious: time and freedom, which will soon become scarce when you enter the real world. In addition, you have access to unlimited resources and knowledge in the form of professors, research centers, a voluminous library, clubs, organizations, etc.

Here at Virginia Tech, there are innumerable opportunities to give your career an early boost. Remember that your undergraduate and graduate colleagues take the same classes, study the same textbooks, hear the same lectures and are exposed to the same knowledge. How you manage your free time in order to add more feathers to your hat is what will make you more marketable and appealing than your classmates.

Bond and Securities Investing by Students (BASIS) and Student-managed Endowment for Educational Development (SEED) are two top-quality organizations that budding investors, money managers and entrepreneurs should consider joining. Here you will meet some intelligent and highly motivated individuals striving to make money yield handsome returns for the university. Although admission to SEED or BASIS is highly competitive, getting a foot in the door is beneficial. SEED invests university funds primarily in securities and BASIS concentrates more on fixed income investments.

"It's a unique experience to manage large funds at such a young age. With students from different majors involved in the decision making process, you learn a lot because you have to incorporate diverse opinions while assessing different positions and trades. Investing as a team is poles apart from investing individually," said BASIS member and junior mechanical engineering major, Nandan Shah.

Shah also expressed how the team feels a sense of accomplishment when a certain investment goes through. It's one of those rare win-win situations where the school makes money and you learn a great deal in the process. SEED and BASIS are two elite groups from which many investment banks and asset management companies are known to hire regularly.

Recently, Tony Yang, a senior undergraduate industrial and systems engineering student, started the Private Entrepreneurs Society, where budding entrepreneurs meet weekly to discuss and evaluate potential business ideas, real estate ideas and investment opportunities.

"It's different here," said co-founder and class of 2007 alum, Josh Prior. "As we are not associated with the university, we can execute potential business ideas with making profits the primary goal."

"Everyone in the society got involved automatically because they know their work will be rewarded via the revenue sharing business model," Prior added. Although admission to this society is by invitation only, Yang expressed a desire to expand the society. He can be contacted at private.entrepreneurs@gmail.com.

Leadership Tech and ELITE are two more associations where you can hone your leadership, communication and people skills and learn how to be a high-performance individual. And you get to work with like-minded people to achieve your passion, which is a great feeling.

It's not vitally important for us to start making millions by the time we graduate, but what is essential is that we have sufficient practical knowledge in addition to the academic knowledge that all of us possess. So, one definite way to get ahead in this rat race is to start right and start early.

Online link to this article:

http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/2007/10/23/money_whizdom__start_now_to_taste_success_early