Posts Tagged Education Counselling
MentorPolis.com featured on The Telegraph
We’ve also been commended for our guidance to mentees for popular Post graduate schools like Harvard Business School, Stanford University, Yale School of Management, Stern School of Business, ISB and IIMs, read on…Oprah Winfrey once famously said, “I don’t think anybody makes it in the world without some form of mentorship.” And rightly so. If you look back, mentors have had a huge role to play in the lives of every legend or celebrity. One of the greatest instances of mentoring is the example of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates was the mentor of Plato, who mentored Aristotle. If Sachin Tendulkar was mentored by coach Ramakant Achrekar, A.R. Rahman is the protégé of maestro Illayaraja. And wasn’t Professor Dumbledore mentoring Harry Potter through all his magical exploits?
Finding a mentor can be a life changing experience. Most of us have had mentors, who guided us through difficult times. If you are still looking for that someone to push you in the right direction try MentorPolis.com. The site connects students who seek academic and professional advice from accomplished mentors.
MentorPolis has on board mentors from top institutions such as the Harvard Business School, Stanford University, Yale School of Management, Stern School of Business, ISB and IIMs. The site currently offers mentor programmes in six fields — MBA abroad, MBA India, engineering abroad, engineering India, entrepreneurship and careers.
The portal has five main sections. The “how it works” section will give you an idea about the basic ethos of the site. There are sample questions asked by students and a sample consultation to show you how a typical communication takes place. Find a mentor is the section which allows you to browse the list of mentors using keywords. The next section, called Learn, is where the real action is. It has modules that allow students to ask questions to mentors, web links to interesting articles and resources, interviews of successful students and online seminars. Besides, there is a link on FAQs and a mentorpolis blog that features articles and news items related to the portal.
Launched in April 2009, MentorPolis is still in its nascent stage. A mentoring site is a novel concept in India and definitely worth a try. The list of mentors is small but interesting. The choice of subject verticals favour the engineering and MBA crowd.
For those aspiring to be in this bracket of specialisation, there is enough dope to keep you hooked. For instance, if you are interested in getting an engineering degree from abroad, you could gain from advice from students who have passed out from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Get tips on the application procedure, admission tests and scholarships. The best part is that all mentors are or have been recent students and should therefore be able to connect with mentees easily.
To reach your mentor you need to follow a five-step process. First, register as a mentee by filling in your biodata. Then browse through the mentor profiles and address your request to a mentor, pay for the consultation and schedule your call. Most aspects of the site are free — that includes creating an account, the webinars, knowledge resources and video casts. But if you decide to call the mentors, the price is a steep Rs 500 per call.
The design is clear and systematic, leaving no space for confusion. The colours used are simple and basic. The language is easy to understand. However, the site can do with a little bit of playing around with design and colours. The content of course could include a lot more verticals — social sciences, design, media, architecture, the wish list is long. But when aspirations meet direction, let the sky be the limit.
Mentoring students online – The Hindu Story on MentorPolis.com
The post as it appeared in The Hindu – Chennai and Hyderabad Edition on 31st August 2009.
Hindu MentorPolis Article
“If collegemates meet up, they would probably discuss favourite spots on campus, or talk about their professors, or possibly recall funny anecdotes that their batch witnessed. But this four, who are alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi, went beyond.
Anshuman Chaudhary, Avijit Sharma, Anshul Aggarwal and Pratik Aggarwal of IIT-Delhi, who were lucky to have very helpful seniors, realised that not all students had mentors to help them through the challenging decision-making phase that is part of college life.
“While most students follow what others around them are doing, they may be unaware of their true potential and opportunities that exist in the outside world,” says Anshuman, who works from Mumbai, with his other three Delhi-based colleagues.
Thus was born www.mentorpolis.com — a portal that seeks to help students and professionals looking for advice on higher education or career. “Mentors not only help people in identifying the most suitable places for them, they also guide them to reach those places.”
The portal enables visitors to obtain Career guidance from experts in different fields. Course-specific mentoring as well strategy-based mentoring is provided by a panel of mentors representing different academic disciplines and professions.
“When we started, our own IIT seniors and their secondary contacts were the first buyers of idea and were enrolled as mentors. Hence, the starting point was engineering and management,” says Anshuman.
How it works
MentorPolis boasts of mentors from top institutions such as Harvard Business School, Stern School, New York City, Stanford and Yale.
Considering that mentoring is a continuous process demanding systematic interaction and consistency in guidance, it could be a challenging service, particularly when it is offered online.
Aware of this challenge, team MentorPolis employs a mix of web and telephone-based counselling process. A candidate seeking guidance could browse the site and look at mentor profiles. After this, they could select a suitable mentor, schedule communication, pay for the consultation request and subsequently keep connecting with the mentor.
Once a call is scheduled, MentorPolis dials out to both the mentor as well as the ‘mentee’ to connect them on phone. The subsequent follow-up, rescheduling and document transfer, if any, takes place online. “We provide an online collaboration space for the mentor and ‘mentee’ to interact after they are finished with the telephonic consultation. Such a collaborative environment ensures that the ‘mentee’ is in continuous touch with the mentor for any future guidance or doubts.” The team is also working on an offline model to serve people who are not very comfortable with web as a medium.
In a span of three months, over 700 ‘mentees’ have registered with MentorPolis. The users are mostly from the Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities. “Our team has already started the marketing campaign in the Tier-2 cities, as these are the places where our need is felt the most.”
Interestingly, quite a few people abroad have also shown interest in the services and have registered for them.
The young team of entrepreneurs, which has worked out an interesting revenue model, seems quite eager to make sure candidates get the best. ‘Web Seminars’ featuring the mentor panel are also offered free for all registered users. “We want to make the right kind of advice available for candidates when it matters the most!”
MEERA SRINIVASAN ”
You can access this article here.
Share on FacebookMentorPolis Success Story: 3 mentees receive HBS MBA 2+2 interview offers
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on July 24th, 2009
Harvard Business School recently extended interview offers to the applicants for the 2nd cohort of the 2+2 program, and we are proud to announce that 3 of the mentees- all of them engineers from Indian Institute of Technology – received interview offers. These mentees worked with mentors Pratik Agarwal and Teresa Teodori over the course of their application- ranging from their GMAT preparation to the positioning effort in their essays to building a recommender’s packet.
Mentors will now help them prepare for their interviews by scheduling mock interviews with 2+2-accepted students. We also look forward to help other applicants prepare for their interviews. All the best!
MentorPolis Team
Share on FacebookCareer Log – Indian Express Story on MentorPolis
The post as it appeared in Indian Express – Delhi Edition on 21st June 2009.
IndianExpress MentorPolis Article
After graduating from IIT Delhi two years ago, Avijit Sharma, 23, faced a common dilemma: what next. “My friends’ formula was to opt for an MBA and then grab a job in a well-paying multinational firm,” says Sharma, who settled for a job instead. But he continued looking for a solution to such questions. After brainstorming with friends at his Gurgaon home last November, the mechanical engineering graduate thought of a platform that brought mentors together for dispensing career and educational guidance, available at the click of a mouse.
On May 1 this year, Sharma started an online portal, mentorpolis.com, for fresh graduates and young professionals to help them make informed career decisions. “We always look to our immediate seniors and friends whenever we want to take an important decision that could impact our career. But at times we end up making the wrong choices because we could not get timely advice. We want to do away with that problem,” says Sharma, who quit his job with a Bangalore software firm earlier this year. He teamed up with two friends and IIT alumni Anshul Agrawal and Pratik Agarwal to carry the concept forward.
The portal has got over 600 registered users in the age group of 17-25, comprising under-graduates, fresh graduates, young professionals and those looking for a change of job. They also provide advice on entrepreneurship. A Facebook community and a group on LinkedIn network help with the publicity.
The mentors are usually students with an impeccable academic record. “We receive entries from students keen on advising people about careers and courses. After scanning their educational qualifications and personal bio data, the potential mentors were short-listed based on their credentials,” explains Anshul, a civil engineering graduate, who helped design the website. At present, the portal only has mentors from the engineering and business fields and provides career advice on jobs in the automotive sector, finance, consultancy and FMCG sectors. The pool of mentors includes graduates from Harvard Business School, Stern School of Business, New York, Indian School of Business and the IIMs in the business stream and students from Stanford, MIT and the IITs from the engineering stream.
“We rope in mentors at various levels for catering to the varying needs of the students,” explains Pratik, who recently successfully mentored an IIT graduate on how to clear the GMAT, TOEFL and application essays needed for an admission into Yale Business School. “Since I had recently cleared the admission process for Harvard Business School, I was better clued in on the preparations needed for such business schools,” he explains.
At present those seeking advice can speak to the mentors over the phone for a fee of Rs 500 per call or chat with them through webinars or online live seminars or post their queries on online message boards—free of cost. “We are charging the telephone fee to run our operational costs. Plus we are saving students thousands of rupees which they would otherwise have invested in coaching institutes,” says Anshul.
Next, the trio hopes to rope in mentors for the humanities, law and other professional streams. “Since we are engineering students, it was a natural inclination that we opted for mentors in science streams first,” says Sharma.
You can access this article here.
Share on FacebookRoadmap to Online CAT 2009 – 2nd MentorPolis Webinar
Posted by admin in Web Seminar on June 20th, 2009
Delivering on our promise of creating more value for our mentees at every stage, following are some pointers from our mentor—Arnav Sinha
Before any of you get all worked up because of the change in format of CAT to an online one from this year, please realize that the fundamental areas that CAT has been testing applicants in would not change. The candidates will still have to prove their aptitude in mathematics, English language and reasoning and data-interpretation. If you understand that, you’d realize that the pattern of preparation really does not change too much.
Basic Preparation Tips for the next 3-4 months:
RC
- 1. Speed-read through moderately long passages on a variety of topics (including ones that you don’t find interesting) and evaluate how much you are able to retain at the end. Try to improve on it everyday.
2. Reading through online editions of magazines like Economist or Time would help in terms of developing comfort with reading text on the screen.
VA
- 1. Do not waste time mugging up the GRE word-list.
2. Converse in English as much as possible, maybe start writing a blog regularly on topics you find worth talking about, avoid use of SMS-English while writing – essentially develop familiarity with the language.
QA
- 1. If you haven’t done it till now, do cover the entire mathematics syllabus from the course material provided by any of the standard coaching classes. You could also spend some time with the relevant textbooks from school, if there’s any area you are finding particularly difficult.
2. While analyzing a test paper always try to think of a shorter method to solve every question, even the ones you got right in a few seconds.
DI/Reasoning
- 1. Get comfortable with a variety of ways to portray complicated data. If you keep yourself from getting intimidated with some weird looking chart or table in the paper, you would realize that in most cases the scarier the data looks, the easier the questions are.
2. Even for genuinely difficult case-lets, try to identify one or two of the easier questions, which can earn you some valuable marks.
a. For all these sections, practice using sectional tests, rather than solving the entire paper all the time.
b. Do not take more than 3-4 tests in a week. It’s important that you don’t get bored with the process.
c. Join at least one (and one is generally enough) of the national-level test series that are held simultaneously across India every weekend. The rest of the tests during the week can be old papers that you can get from a senior, buy from a coaching class or anywhere else in the market.
d. Analyse. Analyse. Analyse. Spend at least 4 hours or so, preferably on the same day, analysing a 2 hour paper. Mark all the careless mistakes you made and lost marks pointlessly in (including not attempting a question just because it looked difficult or was from an area you are scared of). Find shorter methods of solving questions. Ensure your mistakes aren’t repeated the next time.
e. As far as reading material is concerned, the stuff given by any standard coaching class is good enough.
f. Finally, enjoy the process. Treat a test paper as an extended form of a puzzle – a crossword or a sudoku – that you would solve for leisure while reading a newspaper.
And, goes without saying, please feel free to get in touch with me or other mentors available at Mentorpolis for any clarifications or help.
More coverage – Mentorpolis.com in Alootechie
The post as it appeared on alootechie.com page.
A group of recent graduates from IIT Delhi have launched MentorPolis.com, an online platform that aims to connect mentees, who seek academic and professional advice, with mentors through telephonic consultations and web seminars.
MentorPolis.com claims to have currently more than 50 mentors who come from distinguished colleges from India and abroad such as IIT, IIM, Harvard Business School, Stanford university and other top colleges of US and Europe. These mentors offer advice on verticals like engineering in India and abroad, MBA in India and abroad, entrepreneurship and job preparation.
“We had two strong reasons of focusing our effort in education and professional vertical. Firstly, we realized that there is a dearth of competent advice and guidance for most Indian students and professionals. And secondly, good mentors not only help people in identifying most suitable places but guide them in reaching those places as well. Here is where we saw the opportunity,” Avijit Sharma, co-founder and CEO, MentorPolis.com told AlooTechie.
According to Avijit Sharma, MentorPolis.com does not charge mentees for creating an account and for using knowledge resources such as Q&A, web-links and video-casts. “The web seminars taken up by our mentor panel are also free for all the registered users. However, we charge mentees for any personal consultation they request with any of our mentor. A part of the fees is retained by MentorPolis,” Sharma informed.
Launched in April 2009, MentorPolis.com has so far attracted over 500 registered mentees who are primarily high school students, undergraduates and young professionals. According to Avijit Sharma, most of the users are coming from the Tier-I and II cities. “As an interesting trend, there have been quite a few people from abroad who have shown interest in the services and have registered as mentees,” Sharma added.
Thanks to Alootechie.com for their review, you can access this article here.
Share on FacebookMentorPolis.com featured by StartupDuniya
The post as it appeared on the startupduniya page.
Mentorpolis is a new startup by IIT graduates, that hopes to make it easier to search and find mentors. A lot of times, we’re faced with significant dilemmas about what decision to make – be it in your professional life, related to education, job or entrepreneurship. What would help is if we get some guidance from a person who’s ‘been there, done that’. And that’s what Mentorpolis hopes to accomplish.
Briefly put, Mentorpolis is a marketplace for finding mentors. Here’s how it works:
- You search for and explore various mentor profiles on the site
- Select a mentor whose expertise closely matches your requirements.
- Schedule a mutually agreeable time to touch base with your mentor
- Mentors decide their own charges for mentoring sessions. You (the mentee) pay the amount before the scheduled call
- Get in touch with your mentor for personalized advice and recommendations
Some sample questions that you can seek out a mentor to guide you through:
‘I’m thinking on doing my masters in engineering from US. Can you help me find good schools that fit my profile and interests?‘
‘I am very good with web 2.0 technologies but lack the commercial sense of a web enterprise. How do I get started with my idea?’
You can also view a couple of sample mentoring session transcripts here.
Web seminars and online conversations on the site are free of cost. However, each telephonic or in-person session costs Rs 500/-.
I think this is a great idea. Going by the number of young folks who seek out answers to such questions, there is a viable market out there. A couple of suggestions for them:
1) Reach out to sites like NENOnline and bloggers like Rashmi Bansal – they deal with a lot of young folks who are seeking career guidance , education advice and the likes.
2) Rs 500/- may be a bit steep for fresh graduates or those who are still in college. I would suggest making it more alluring to this demographic – introduce a per hour pricing and probably some discount to such young folks. In addition, introduce a ‘free mentoring sessions for the first month’ kinda deal – this will help to get the initial user base on the site.
Do check it out and let me know what you think about Mentorpolis.
Thanks to startupduniya for their review and kind words of appreciation, we would definitely think upon their suggestions for future.
You can also access this article here.
MentorPolis Team
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MentorPolis.com is a communication channel that connects mentees who seek academic and professional advice, with accomplished and suitable mentors via Telephone Consultations, In-person meetings and Web Seminars. Read More
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