This NeuroView article offers guidance to early-career scientists on selecting a graduate or postdoctoral advisor. Effective mentorship is essential not only for individual career development but also for fostering innovation and supporting the well-being of academic institutions. There is a strong need for universities to invest more in training faculty members to become effective mentors and to systematically evaluate the quality of mentorship. To address this, the article proposes the introduction of an M-index as a metric for assessing mentoring effectiveness. It also advocates for more comprehensive research into the characteristics of outstanding mentorship, greater recognition and rewards for exemplary mentors, and the inclusion of mentorship quality as a key criterion in the awarding of research grants and academic honors.