Let's connect you with a mentor.

All Wharton undergraduates with junior or senior standing are eligible to be matched with an MBA mentor. If you are a Wharton freshman or sophomore, the following options are available to you:

• Freshman: Be matched with a upperclassmen mentor through Wharton Cohorts
• Sophomore: Be matched with an alumni mentor through SAMP: the Sophomore Alumni Mentorship Program

Juniors will be matched with a first year MBA while seniors are matched with a second year MBA. This is intentionally designed you that both of you go through your final 2 years at Wharton together, from internship recruiting to evaluating return offers to graduating together.

We believe in empowering undergraduates with opportunities that expand their perspectives, foster a sense of community, and challenge them to grow. Our MBA mentorship program is a core aspect of our mission as an MBA mentor can leverage past experience from the professional world to provide undergraduates with a new perspective and guidance on future ambitions.

After the matching application closes, we will export, review, and clean the data set to generate 4 master match files: juniors, seniors, 1Ys, and 2Ys. We'll conduct a weighted average of preferences (location, industry, hobbies, and affinities) across the entire pool to generate one to many match scores and then run a simple utility match function. Juniors are matched with 1Ys and seniors are matched with 2Ys. Any leftovers on either side are manually matched.

This process is not perfect, but it provides a "good enough" match for our purposes as we generally match 600+ people in one semester, so please bear with us. To ensure the best fit possible, we encourage you to be selective in your preferences as selecting every box will only mean that you are fine with anyone.

We hope not. Wait. What? Yeah, you read that right. The purpose of our mentorship program is to connect you with someone who will provide you a new perspective and challenge you to grow.

Through our years of research, we've found that matching you with a clone of yourself does not contribute effectively to your growth, if at all. Quite frankly, these matches are the quickest to fall apart because the other person doesn't bring something new to keep the relationship interesting. It often feels like you're talking to yourself.

While we believe that a mentor who's different can challenge you to grow, we still try to provide a few attributes in common such as industry, location, bio-demographics (gender & race) and affinity (Military, LGBT+, etc).

While every mentorship relationship is different, mentors can, but are not obligated to:

• Provide insight into an industry area, location, or field
• Be a sounding board for ideas
• Support you as a friend
• Give you advice on potential future ambitions
• Teach you a new skill or tool you're interested in
• Identify areas where you can step up or grow in your personal or professional life
• Help you practice cases, mock interviews, or review your resume
• Connect you with professionals in areas you're interested in exploring further
• and more!

At the end of the day, your relationship with your mentor, like any relationship, will be based on what the both of you have invested in it. If you are not willing to reach out and engage with your mentor, who has volunteered their time to support you, then ultimately, the relationship will go nowhere. Here's what you can do to make the most of the relationship:

• Set up a regular time and date to check-in and commit to it.
• Take the initiative to engage, remember that they have volunteered to help you, so make the effort for them as minimal as possible.
• Recognize challenges you're facing personally or professionally and come prepared to discuss them with your mentor.
• Establish key goals or ambitions you'd like to reach and identify ways in which your mentor can best support you.
• Have a goal for each meeting and come with some questions in mind.
• Invest time in also listening to your mentors' challenges and find areas of mutual support.
• Pick 2-3 topics to focus on for each meeting and take things slow. Look for themes in your challenges, questions, or problems.
• Ask your mentor to check your blind spots and how you can grow.
• Be intentional in your interactions, it shows and makes every meeting more meaningful.
• Have fun! Change it up. Perhaps meet at a cafe, a park, or a rock climbing gym. Remember that your mentor is a human too, so don't be afraid to get social. They might just be your new bowling or belay partner.

While your relationship with your mentor is ultimately up to you, GUIDE hosts regular events & socials throughout the year to stay in touch with your mentor. Our communications team will provide regular updates by emails on prospective conversation topics and reflection prompts so keep an eye out for emails from whartonguide@wharton.upenn.edu

In addition, we host regular professional development and networking events open to the greater undergraduate community such as MBA panels, interviewing workshops, and speed casing events.

Oh no! If your mentor is unresponsive, let us know at whartonguide@wharton.upenn.edu and we'll work with you to identify alternative solutions or next steps.

Drop us a line at whartonguide@wharton.upenn.edu and a member of our leadership team will follow-up.