8 Benefits of Having a Mentor While in College

For many, entering college for the first time is one of the biggest changes they have experienced in life. It's a time of new challenges and experiences that can be difficult to navigate.

Having a strong mentoring relationship with a trusted, good mentor can make a world of difference in college. Strong mentorship can help mentees through the college experience, identify their strengths and areas for improvement, as well as form career goals and decide on their career path.

What Is a Mentor?

A mentor is someone with more experience who can help guide others through new experiences and help them fulfill their potential. In college, this could be an older student, a professor, a staff member, or a professional in your chosen field.

The things that a good mentor will provide to a mentee will evolve over time. As the mentee progresses further in their college experience, a mentoring relationship can begin to help them with professional development, developing a professional network, forming achievable career goals, and much more.

Ultimately, a good mentor is someone who has the best interest of the mentee in mind while helping them navigate new experiences.

How Does a Mentor Relationship Work?

''The Science of Mentoring Relationships'' in STEMM explains that ''mentoring relationships emphasize helping the individual grow and accomplish goals.'' At its core, this is what successful mentoring is about. It may look different depending on the environment and what kind of mentoring relationship the mentor and mentee have.

In college, a mentor could give tips about the college experience, like which professors to take, the best study spots in the library, and which student organizations are the best. But this will evolve over time, leading to help with personal growth, expanding your professional network, setting career goals, and beginning career development.

It may also be easier in college to form a mentoring relationship than in other stages of life. Schools often have mentoring programs to help mentees connect with good mentors. These mentors are often older students. Alternatively, students could find a mentor in a professor in their department or a member of staff.

Eight Ways a Mentor Can Benefit Your College Experience

Here are some of the ways having a great mentor can benefit you in your college experience.

1. They Have a Knowledgeable Perspective

One of the most significant benefits of a mentor is their experience. This allows them to provide not only a different perspective but a knowledgeable one. They can use their own experiences to guide you.

Their knowledge from experiences helps you feel confident in the guidance, feedback, and advice they are being provided because their mentor has experienced these things before.

2. They Help You Set Goals

Setting goals and having a roadmap of tasks to follow is an important foundation for completing anything in life, especially in college and your professional life. But as a new college student, knowing where to focus your efforts and what goals to set can be hugely challenging.

Since a mentor has gone through these or similar experiences before, they can help you create a roadmap of smart goals to strive toward and the specific tasks that must be completed to achieve them. They can offer a new perspective on what goals are worth prioritizing as well as how to reach them.

3. They Help You Identify Strengths

Every individual is different, and we all have our own strengths and weaknesses. Mentors who are experienced, or who have perhaps worked in mentorship programs before, are able to help college students identify their areas of strength and play to those strengths. For example, certain studying methods may be more effective, or certain elective courses might be more beneficial for a student.

Having self-awareness of your own strengths can help you work efficiently as well as be mindful of your areas that need improvement, or that you may need to work at a bit harder, and it can help you develop new skills. It also doesn't just help in the short-term in college or your career, but also with personal development in your overall life.

4. They Provide Constructive Feedback

Constructive criticism is another pivotal element of a mentor-mentee relationship. Feedback is essential for improving in any area of life, and a mentor is in a perfect position to provide constructive criticism to you. As a person who is prioritizing the growth of the person whom they are mentoring, they can give honest feedback in a way that will help you excel.

This can also help you become accustomed to receiving feedback, as well as help you differentiate between feedback that is helpful and feedback that would best be ignored. Mentors can also act as a sounding board for ideas, providing feedback and suggestions.

5. They Help You Make Connections

Making connections is an important part of professional growth, and this is something mentors can help with, particularly if they are very involved in their field. Having gone through the process of making connections themselves, they can guide you through networking and provide new opportunities for making connections, as well as helping them create and seize opportunities themselves.

Mentors may also be able to provide valuable recommendations to internships, potential employers, and other important connections that will help you open doors in their field.

6. They Help You Stay Accountable

A huge way that mentors help students to grow toward their goals is not just through their guidance but also through accountability. Regularly checking in on progress helps keep you motivated. It also helps mentors to guide effectively, able to give tips and pointers as needed.

7. They Can Be a Role Model

As someone who has gone through the life stages you are experiencing, mentors serve as a role model for you. They provide an example of the goals to strive for, and they act as someone for you to measure yourself against.

8. They Help Shape Your Professional Self

When students graduate college and move on into the professional world, the lessons of their mentors will have had a strong impact on them and their educational experience. All of these lessons help to shape who they are, both on a personal level and a professional level. Who they go to be in their career is in part a product of what they learned and experienced while being mentored.

What Qualities Should I Look for in a Mentor?

Here are some of the qualities you can look for in order to find the right mentor for you.

Experienced

Experience is one of the most important qualities to look for in a mentor. Experience, as well as success, is what makes their guidance worthwhile. It is the foundation of all the benefits that mentorship provides.

Empathetic

Empathy is an essential human quality to find in a mentor. An ability to understand and relate with their mentee and their struggles, fears, and goals is something that truly marks someone as a mentor, rather than just someone who is successful in their field or who has successfully navigated higher education.

Trustworthy

In all the types of mentoring, the mentee and the mentor will be working closely together, and the mentor must not only be trusted with knowledge of their mentee's life, but there also must be trust that their guidance is sound. Trust is one of the most important qualities to find in a mentor.