FAQs

Faqs

Below are answers to some of the more frequent questions we receive to help you decide if you would like to follow up further. We are always happy to set up a free consult to tell you more about our program and see if it’s a good fit.

Program basics

Who are Hugo’s Mentors?

Hugo's mentors are Professors, Phds, Postdocs, Researchers, Institute Directors, and Adjuncts. They are all academic experts at leading universities that include Yale, Harvard, UPenn, Columbia, NYU, and Georgetown. They are not just experts in their field, but also great teachers and communicators who are excited to pass on their knowledge to the next generation,

Who are Hugo students?

There is no such thing as an “ideal” Hugo mentee. We designed Hugo to be a completely personalized experience. The only thing that all our students have in common is curiosity, motivation and a desire to learn and an excitement to work with a mentor in their field of interest.

How are students matched to mentors?

We match students to mentors based on their application and interview and work to find the best fit based on our years of research and experience in this field. We do not take requests for matches to a mentor from a specific school.

What age students do you accept into the program?

While we offer guidelines to help students as they springboard into the world of professionalism, we find that students get the most out of the experience if they are rising high school Sophomores or older. Hugo mentees schedule their own meetings, communicate directly with their mentors (top professors and researchers in their fields), work independently between mentor meetings, and complete a final project on their own. Part of the benefit of completing a mentorship like this is that students get a head start on learning skills that will be expected in college and beyond. You don’t need to have mastered all these skills, but you do need to be independent and motivated enough to take this on.

How much do mentorships cost?

Rates vary based on the background of the mentor and their position within the institution and are comparable to many university summer programs. Mentorship fees cover a summer semester (or longer during the school year when schedules are busier and meetings are spaced further apart.) This includes our evaluation, search and matching to a mentor, initial discussions and planning around the mentorship approach and project, 10 hours of 1:1 meeting time beyond the introductory session, the time the professor takes to design the program and provide you with feedback, as well as the support of our Program Officer. Please feel free to email us at info@hugomentors.com to discuss more specifics about our program.

Program Timing and Scheduling

Is there a deadline for my mentorship application?

Hugo accepts applications on a rolling basis. It can take us up to 6 weeks to match a student with a mentor once an application is received and initiated with a student interview. It can be more challenging to match students with mentors who are interested in a summer mentorship once it gets to late spring which is why we have priority deadlines in February and March and a final deadline of April 15th for summer mentorships. You are always welcome to submit an application earlier and we encourage you to submit an application as soon as you know you are interested in a mentorship. We review them as they come in but please keep in mind that we are a small organization and can only work with so many students at one time.

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What is the time commitment for a mentorship?

A typical Hugo academic mentorship consists of approximately ten hours (usually broken into 10 meetings) once the mentorship kicks off. Meetings take place virtually with interim assignments that should take between 3 and 5 hours (though some students do more); therefore, a typical mentorship will require about 40-60 hours of your time over the course of the school year or summer. We build the mentorship goals and deliverables around the student's availability (among other factors) so students aiming for creating a paper to submit for publication or a more ambitious project will often spend more time.

How long will it take for me to complete a mentorship?

All Hugo mentorships are customized to the student’s schedule and pacing so we have had students who have done an accelerated mentorship in one month and those that have stretched it out over 9 months and those that have done several back to back mentorships over 1.5 years. As a general rule, we find that students on a summer track complete their mentorships within 3 months, while those on the academic year track complete their mentorships in about 8 months.

When is the best time for me to do a mentorship?

This depends largely on you, your style of learning, and your other time commitments. Some students like to do an accelerated mentorship over the summer, finishing their projects before school starts up again. For students that are working, interning, volunteering, or traveling in the summer, this might not be ideal.

Mentorships completed during the academic year happen at a more leisurely pace, in order to accommodate for school, extracurricular activities, and testing schedules.

Once I’ve completed the application interview, how long will it be until I’m matched with a mentor?

We begin our customized mentor search immediately following the phone interview. Depending on what topic you’re interested in, finding a mentor that matches with your goals can take anywhere from 2 - 5 weeks - though on rare occasions it can take longer. We continue the search until we find a mentor that sparks excitement for you!

I’m under a strict deadline--what can I do to make sure my application is processed as quickly as possible?

Collect your availability ahead of time. Try to list all the possible times/days you’d be available to meet; even if you’re not going to fill all that time with your mentorship project, it will give you the most flexibility to match up meeting times with your mentor. This gives you the highest probability of scheduling your meetings on the first try.

Think of all the reasons you want to do a Hugo mentorship, and write them down in a “brain dump.” Bring that brain dump with you to your follow up calls and Zoom meetings to make sure you communicate everything you’re looking to achieve with your mentorship team

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Hugo Projects

What are Hugo Projects?

All Hugo Mentorships have a final deliverable and are built off a curriculum designed to meet them where they are in their learning and designed around the students objectives. What is most exciting to us is how the students have used their mentorship as a springboard to further their interests and goals and taken their newfound knowledge and final projects to redesign school curriculums, publish papers and OpEds, build up their art or engineering portfolio with solar cars and computer models. and contribute to a congressman’s policy brief or a nonprofits planning,

Do I need to have a project idea to apply?

Some students come to us with very specific goals and project ideas: while other students come to us with just a strong, but a general interest in a topic; and others come to us with a variety of interests. Our program is designed for curious and motivated students and our mentorship coaches are here to help you figure out what you like, what you don’t like, and what you want to know. We love working with students who are a little less sure of their path and helping them connect the dots around their different interests. We've worked with 200+ students and some of our biggest successes has been helping students find clarity and confidence in their academic pursuits.

I want to complete a very specific project on an obscure/specialty topic. Can you really find a mentor for me in such niche areas?

Absolutely! One of our favorite challenges is to find the perfect mentor match for a bespoke project (it’s as much fun for our mentors as it is for the mentees). We’ve found mentors in fields ranging from Detroit techno to quantum entanglement to micrography (a field we hadn’t even heard of before we received an application for it).

Having said this, your degree of experience with a topic will influence how deeply you can dive in on your project. In such cases, we encourage our mentees to build on their foundational knowledge during the first portion of their mentorship so they can engage fluently with their mentor as their program progresses.

What if I’m running behind, or I want to add something to my project?

Let your program coach and mentor know; often times we can adjust the initially agreed upon schedule or arrange for additional sessions. Some students even decide to do a second mentorship (with the same mentor or someone new).

Hugo takes a student- first approach

Faqs

Program basics

Program Timing and Scheduling

Hugo Projects