Personalised Attention: How Does the Milestone Mentoring System Work?

There is an email eagerly awaited by both Milestone students and mentors, one that is surely not left unread for long. Some of our new students already inquire about the contents of this email during our introductory orientation conversations: who will be my mentor? With whom will I be working in the upcoming academic year?

This is an exciting and significant question for both students and mentors. The email with the answer marks, in every May, the beginning of a new shared learning journey, during which mentor and mentee will spend a significant amount of time together. We can now share fresh data about the time spent together: in the 2022-23 academic year, Milestone Institute’s 71 mentors and 350 students spent a total of 3240 hours in mentoring sessions.
But why do we consider this educational format important, and what exactly happens during this time?

Beyond Advising: How Mentoring Works in Practice

The first meeting between student and mentor is the beginning of a trusting relationship, during which they take on various roles depending on where they are in the dynamically evolving learning process. Some duos work together for several years, while in other cases they only spend a study phase together.

Mentor and mentee work as partners towards jointly formulated goals. These goals can be academic, such as identifying the student’s areas of interest and expanding their knowledge, or they can be related to self-reflection or skillbuilding, such as managing study-related anxieties or becoming more confident in class participation. Depending on the student’s grade, the mentoring process also involves planning and implementing grade-level quests and projects that build on the student’s interests and motivations. Among other things, the mentor assists the student in discovering their abilities and limitations, learning time management skills, doing research, and crafting a well-structured personal statement for their university applications.

The Secret to Successful Mentoring: The Connection Between Mentor and Student

A mentor has a different perspective on and relationship with the student than the parent, the class teacher, the school psychologist, or the student’s best friend. During the mentoring process, it is possible for a deep personal connection to develop between the mentor and the student, while in other cases, the meetings are more task-oriented. Between these two extremes, there are many shades of experiences, but what remains constant is that the mentor always works for the benefit of the student and advocates for their interests.

Creating mentor and mentee pairs is a complex process at the beginning of the school year. In the case of new students, we rely on their application materials and personal orientation interviews, while we already have an overview of the professional and personal journeys of students who have been studying with us for years. When brainstorming about the mentor-mentee partnerships, creating a perfect match in the mentor’s field of expertise and the mentee’s often unformed interests is not our primary criterion. “We choose a personality type to accompany the student and to answer and address the student’s academic needs in a given period. The attitude towards learning, the mentor’s motivational methods, and their way of thinking are more important than how well their field of expertise aligns with the student’s academic needs,” says Dalma Szentpály, Head of the Lower House.

A Journey Together – How Mentoring Impacts Both Student and Mentor

What we experience quite often is that the initial interests of newly enrolled students – for example, the programming-law-economics trio influenced by family or friends – gets transformed through collaboration with the mentors. For instance, a student who initially was enthusiastic about web design, after a year-long journey of self-discovery and exploration of different fields, ended up applying for an interdisciplinary program in data science and sociology. Uncovering and supporting the students’ internal interests is the essence of mentoring, and mentors employ various methods according to their own style and the student’s disposition.

The mentoring partnership also offers a lot to the mentors themselves. Collaborating with the students, engaging in academic exploration and immersion, and witnessing the development of the mentees’ personalities bring numerous unexpected turns, challenges, and learning opportunities. Mentors are not alone in their successes or difficulties. Over the past years, our task bank has grown significantly, and we also maintain a database of academic competitions and internship programs accessible to both mentors and students. Additionally, each mentor is part of a group of five to six members that meets regularly to discuss practical aspects, share positive and negative experiences, and address challenging cases.

While our mentors may not necessarily have pedagogical qualifications, they are all highly qualified professionals who consider it important to support future generations. The pedagogy workshop series initiated last academic year provides additional opportunities for our mentors to further develop their skills. These workshops are open to the public, allowing anyone to get a taste of the Milestone approach.