Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the reality of mentoring in higher education from the mentor's point of view. The goal is to elaborate best practice of mentoring on issues such as advanced training, professionalization, experience exchange, networking, de facto tasks and levels of interaction with mentees. Design/methodology/approach: This paper examines the gap between theoretical mentoring methods, for example, with regard to timely planning and the reality of being a mentor. Data were generated by qualitative interviews of up to 45 min with mentors with several years of experience. The qualitative findings will help interested people to get a feel for what it means to be a mentor. Findings: The findings showed that each mentor found his or her individual way of mentoring and that each was eager to personally improve. The paper shows influencing factors beyond project planning, such as emotional involvement, dealing with student denial and the time it actually takes to be a good mentor beyond office hours. Research limitations/implications: As matriculation numbers must not be documented due to German data protection law, the de facto effectiveness of mentoring was close to impossible to measure. Social implications: Text. Originality/value: This work is original because the Aachener Mentoring Modell entails 35 professional mentors working in all but one faculty of RWTH Aachen University; it is an entire schooling concept, with technical documentation especially implemented for this project.