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Student Mentors
Helping first-year students and upperclassmen through college
Starting college can be exciting, overwhelming, and challenging. Because students come from different areas and diverse backgrounds, universities work hard to help students adjust to their new surroundings. Many schools have a comprehensive network of support to help you with this transition and the challenges that you will experience during your first year.Besides having faculty and staff who can help you with this adjustment, upperclassmen also volunteer to mentor first-year students.
Student mentor programs vary depending on your school and other factors, but no matter what the structure, the goal is to connect you with an upperclassman with whom you can share and discuss experiences.
Some programs will assign you a mentor based on your area of study. In these cases, you will be able to discuss general questions and concerns about school and also learn about your major and talk about academic plans. Sometimes programs assign one mentor to a few first-year students. This way you meet a mentor to talk with but also other first-year students with the same major who may have the same concerns as you.
Other programs are on a voluntary basis. Both first-year and upperclassmen volunteer to participate. You may be matched with someone who has the same major as you, but this is not always possible or the goal of the program.
Regardless of the design of the program, research and student testimonials show that mentor programs are helpful to both first-year and upperclassmen who participate. Students who have a good experience with a mentor later volunteer when they reach junior or senior year and report that they got as much, if not more, from the program as a mentor.
After graduating from the University of Dayton in 2000, Ann Bezbatchenko worked as an editor for SRA/McGraw-Hill Companies. She returned to school to obtain a master's degree from The Catholic University of America, where she worked as the Assistant Director of Graduate Admissions for CUA. Ann currently works at Loyola University Chicago's Graduate School of Business as the Director of Admissions.
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