Although many academic organizations offer formal mentoring programs, little is known about how individual characteristics of peer mentors and their proteges interact to reduce new-student stress. First-year college students participated in a peer-mentoring program designed to reduce stress. The results of this study demonstrated that proteges who received greater psychosocial and career support showed greater stress reduction. Additionally, proteges with a higher avoid performance goal orientation showed lesser stress reduction. Mentor avoid performance goal orientation was positively associated with stress reduction for proteges high on avoid performance goal orientation, but negatively associated for those low on avoid performance goal orientation. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)