First Rental Property

1999-2003
Bigger and Better Things

I applied to four universities and got accepted to all four of them. I applied to McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, Canada.  Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario.  Wilfred Laurier in Kitchener, Ontario and The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario.

My older brother was attending McMaster University. I didn’t really like McMaster, so I ruled that school out from the start.  Also, I didn’t want to go to McMaster JUST BECAUSE my brother was going there.  I think that was the main reason why I did not like McMaster.  🙂

Brock University was my last choice, so I did not want to go there.  In the event that I did not get in anywhere else, I would have gone to Brock.

My decision was between Wilfred Laurier and The University of Western Ontario. Although I liked the Wilfred Laurier campus, I thought that the school was too small.  It almost felt to me like another high school.  I ended up choosing The University of Western Ontario, because I liked the campus.  The campus was huge and it looked kind of like a golf course.  In addition  I knew so many people from my graduating class that were attending school there. There were 20 people in total from my high school graduating class that chose Western.

While in University, I was laser focused on studying and getting high marks. My game plan was to achieve really high grades and then apply to graduate school. I was either going to go to law school or business school…that was the plan.

I had never studied harder in my life, than I did in my first year of university. After a few of my first exams in university, I received sub par grades, and I realized quickly that this could not continue. As a result, I increased the amount of time I spent studying in order to increase my grades. The increased time that I spent studying did not translate into increased grades, rather I was getting the same results.

I struggled academically throughout University.   I invested a lot of time studying but never got the results that I was aiming for. All was not lost in University, as I really hit my stride with social networking and again involvement with the University Students Council.

I ran for the President of the University Student’s Council in my final year of University.  One of my closest friends, Parag Shah of Garage Living convinced me to run in the election.

With this experience, I had a campaign team of over 40 students working hard for me, and we had a target audience of 26,000 undergraduate students.  Throughout this campaign, I made some really great friends who were very unselfish and who helped me every step of the way.  I could not have succeeded in the campaign, if it was not for the hard work from these friends.  At the time that I am writing this article, it has been 7 years since the campaign, and I am still very good friends with many of the people that helped me.  This was an amazing experience because it showed my how unselfish and helpful people can be when you need them.  It also showed me that sometimes people that you think that you can rely on disappear when you need them the most.

For the first 23 years of my life, I did not think much about real estate at all, in fact I was not interested in it at all.  It was not until after University that my interest began to develop in real estate.  I also have a very good theory why this interest developed in the way that it did…

Click here to read Neil Uttamsingh’s Business Life Story Part One
Click here to read Neil Uttamsingh’s Business Life Story Part Three
Click here to read Neil Uttamsingh’s Business Life Story Part Four
Click here to read Neil Uttamsingh’s Business Life Story Part Five
Click here to read Neil Uttamsingh’s Business Life Story Part Six

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