Why “Someone like me” Matters in Mentor Matching

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By Jean Rhodes

How important is it for mentors and mentees to be matched on the basis of shared gender, race, major, background, or lived experience? My team and I examined this question in a university-wide peer mentoring program serving 2,072 first-year college students. Students were matched only by major, which created a rare opportunity to observe what actually happened when the mentors and mentees were not systematically matched (Ramadurai et al., 2025).

The clearest patterns emerged in subgroup analyses, which suggested that demographic similarity can increase engagement, which in turn is linked to better outcomes. In particular:

  • Male students matched with male mentors reported higher academic self-efficacy and engagement than those matched with female mentors.
  • First-generation students matched with first-generation mentors reported stronger belonging and completed more check-ins.
  • International students matched with international mentors sent more messages and completed more check-ins.

More rigorous evidence comes from a randomized study at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Women entering engineering were randomly assigned to female peer mentors, male peer mentors, or a no-mentor control group. Female peer mentors increased first-year engineering retention relative to the other conditions (Dennehy and Dasgupta, 2017). A long-term follow-up found higher STEM degree completion among women assigned female mentors (Wu et al., 2022). Confidence and motivation appeared to be key pathways. In a related quasi-experimental study, male students assigned to male advisers were more likely to meet and showed stronger persistence and four-year outcomes (Ellis & Gershenson, 2016).

Although shared identity is neither sufficient nor necessary for every mentee,  it can promote engagement. For some students, similarity reflects shared demographic identity or values. For others, it may reflect other common experiences .And, importantly, similarity is not a substitute for skill. A mentor may share a student’s identity and still be unreliable, poorly trained, or unable to listen without making assumptions. Shared experience can open the door to trust, but it does not replace the need for cultural humility, clear boundaries, training, and supervision. Mentors from underrepresented groups should also not be expected to represent all students who share their identity or to carry an institution’s responsibility for belonging. Programs should begin with the support the student needs. Matching processes should include demographics but also invite students to describe the experiences, knowledge, and qualities that would make a mentor desirable and credible.

So, in essence, yes, “Someone like me” appears to matter. So does someone who listens well, keeps commitments, understands the system, and helps create a meaningful path forward.

References

Dennehy, T. C., and Dasgupta, N. (2017). Female peer mentors early in college increase women’s positive academic experiences and retention in engineering. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(23), 5964–5969. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1613117114

Ellis, J., and Gershenson, S. (2020). Gender, peer advising, and college success. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2019.101775

Ramadurai, R., et al. (2025). Mentor-mentee similarity in college peer mentoring: untangling conflicting results. Studies in Higher Education, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2025.2572504

Wu, Y., et al. (2022). Female peer mentors early in college have lasting positive impacts on female engineering students that persist beyond graduation. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34508-x