Cohort 001 · Finance · UNC-Chapel Hill
Ten students. Ten mentors. One semester.
Mentable's first cohort is ten UNC-Chapel Hill sophomores heading into finance recruiting, each paired with someone who has already been through it.
Talent is everywhere. Access isn't. This is the first place we are trying to do something about that, at a small enough scale that we can tell whether it worked.
Why sophomore year
Because it is early enough to matter. Finance recruiting starts long before most students realise it has started, and the decisions that shape it get made in sophomore year: which path to look at, who to talk to, what to have ready.
A student who already knows someone in the industry hears all of that over dinner. A student who does not usually finds out by missing it. The timeline is the same for both of them, which is what makes this the point where knowing one person changes the most.
Why finance first
Not because it matters more than other careers. Because it is unusually legible: the timeline is fixed, the steps are known, and the gap between a student who has been told how it works and one who has not is obvious within a single conversation. That makes it a good place to find out whether any of this works.
Finance is where Mentable starts. It is not what Mentable is. The same structure should work for a student trying to get into research, design, medicine or public service, and those are the cohorts we want to run next.
What the semester actually involves
Mentable is not a course and there is no curriculum. What it organises is the relationship.
- Matched deliberately
- We read every application and pair each student with one mentor by hand. Twenty people is few enough to do that properly, and no algorithm is involved.
- A first conversation with a point
- Both sides arrive having seen what the other is trying to do, so the first half hour is not spent on introductions.
- Goals you both agreed to
- What you are working toward, written down where you can both see it, rather than remembered differently by two people.
- Something to do next
- Conversations end with a specific next step and a date. Mentable keeps the record so the next conversation starts where the last one ended.
- Someone watching the relationship
- If a pairing stalls, we notice and step in. If it is wrong, we say so and rematch rather than leaving it to fade.
Who should apply
Sophomores at UNC-Chapel Hill who are seriously considering finance, willing to prepare, open to being told they are wrong, and likely to do the thing they said they would. You do not need to have chosen a path. Not knowing the difference between the roles yet is a good reason to apply, not a reason not to.
What we are not selecting on: your GPA, your club, your internships, or who you already know. If you already have three people in the industry you can text, this cohort will be more useful to someone else.
What joining does and doesn't mean
Mentable does not promise
- an internship or a job
- an interview anywhere
- an introduction to a particular firm
- a specific mentor
- a professional outcome of any kind
Mentable can promise the parts it controls: a deliberate match, a structure for the relationship, preparation before conversations, a record of what you each agreed, and someone paying attention if it stalls. Recruiting outcomes are not among them, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
What we ask of you
- Fill in your profile properly, so a mentor knows who they are talking to.
- Turn up to conversations having done a bit of thinking first.
- Respect the times a mentor makes available, and say so early if you can’t make one.
- Do the thing you said you’d do between conversations, or say why you didn’t.
- Tell us honestly when the product is confusing or broken. That is half the point of a first cohort.
What you get
- One mentor, matched to what you are actually trying to work out.
- Tools for preparing before a conversation and following through after it.
- Early access to Mentable, and a say in what gets built next.
- A direct line to the two people building this. You will not be talking to a support queue.
What happens after you apply
The application is five short questions plus the basics. There are no right answers, and specific and honest beats polished and impressive every time.
We read every application ourselves, so give us a few days rather than a few minutes. We email you either way. If we take you on, we match you with a mentor by hand and introduce you before the semester gets going.
Applying does not create an account and does not commit you to anything.
Not a student?
Cohort 001 needs ten mentors as much as it needs ten students. If you have been through finance recruiting and would answer the questions you once had to work out alone, that is the other half of this.
Become a mentor