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Bial says she considers the science posse a success so far and has had interest from other schools in starting their own subject-specific posses. “We're actually talking to a few schools about an arts posse,” she says. “And we have enormous interest from other colleges and universities in science posses. Our big challenge is to make sure that we spend the time we need developing the program before we expand it like crazy.”
Meanwhile, the Brandeis posse instructors appreciate the students' large and small accomplishments.
Throughout the students' first semester, says Gordon-Messer, they all learned that working with their peers often led to better grades and a better understanding of material. “When I asked them what was helping them get through their difficult classes,” says Gordon-Messer, “they all said the same thing—it was the posse that pulled them through.” 
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Epstein's inspiration to build a science posse was shaped by his own observations of students, by programs at other universities, and by a landmark education study on college calculus.
In the late 1970s, Uri Treisman, a mathematics graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to know why some students performed so much better than others in calculus.
His initial survey of the students eliminated all the leading theories of the time: low income, lack of motivation, poor high school preparation, and lack of family support did not always translate to poor math scores. So he followed 40 students around, videotaping their lives and study habits. His efforts revealed an explanation, epitomized by one group of Asian friends all at the top of the calculus class. “In the evenings, they would get together,” Treisman recalled. “They might make a meal together and then sit and eat or go over the homework assignments. They would check each others' answers and each others' English... A cousin or an older brother would come in and test them. They would regularly work problems from old exams... They knew exactly where they stood in the class. They had constructed something like a truly academic fraternity, not the more typical fraternity: Sigma Phi Nothing.”
—S.W.
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