By Tiffanie Young

More than 60 seniors signed up as mentors to help sophomores adjust to the Upper School. 
Emma Kaplan ’08 and Natalie Karic ’08, who created the program, assigned four or five sophomores to each mentor. 

“Mentors are required to contact their sophomores and serve as a friend and guide through regular meetings,” Kaplan said. 

Mentors must meet with their sophomores once a week for the first month and a half, Kaplan said, and build friendships while maintaining an air of seniority and helping the sophomores along. 
The relationships are individual commitments, and the requirements dwindle as the year goes on. 
Kaplan and Karic plan to distribute copies of a “student survival guide,” which they wrote together. The guide contains maps, dean profiles and tips for sophomores seeking advice.

The two seniors spoke to other students, teachers, deans and administrators to gather information about each sophomore’s interests, then matched them with seniors of the same gender who share similar interests.

“We tended to pair athletes together because they would understand each other’s schedules,” Kaplan said. 

Sophomores and seniors in performing arts were also matched. 



However, part of the assignment process was random, Karic said, because one of the goals is for students to get to know people they wouldn’t normally be friends with.

Wesley Yip ’08, a mentor, knows three of his sophomores through the water polo team. 
He remembers that his own transition to the Upper Campus was a shock.

“I thought the seniors were all intimidating, kind of big, and I didn’t know any of them,” Yip said. 
As a mentor, he hopes to reduce sophomores’ fear of upperclassmen.

“We want sophomores just to have someone to look up to and to talk to,” Karic said.

If the program goes well, they intend to appoint juniors to carry on mentoring next year, Kaplan said.