It was the last day she could withdraw from her math course, and the sophomore was distraught by the prospect of a dismal grade.

"I had lost my confidence in my ability to do the work," said Jane P. Doe '88, who asked that her real name not be used. Following the lead of 750 students last year, Doe took her troubles to the Bureau of Study Counsel. She says that the professional counselor she talked to was "very understanding, very compassionate" and convinced her to stay in the course.

Doe now meets with a peer supervisor or tutor from the Bureau a few times a week. She says the Bureau has helped her regain her confidence and improve her academic performance.

"Professors are great but sometimes it helps to have someone who's more your own age," Doe says.

She says she would encourage other students to go to the Bureau. Students who don't go "don't want to be stigmatized, but what's worth more: my pride or the grade?" Doe asks.

The Bureau works to restore students' confidence in their abilities and helps them approach their studies more effectively. One-on-one counseling work is the Bureau's core activity, Acting Director Mack I. Davis II says. "It is a very special opportunity that Harvard offers."

Students are referred to the Bureau by a variety of sources, including senior tutors, senior advisers, housemasters, proctors, and University Health Services. But at least 58 percent of the Bureau's patrons tap its resources on their own initiative, according to a report prepared by the Bureau.

Davis oversees a staff of 10 counselors and four administrative assistants and an annual budget of more than $275,000 from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The staff also includes paid undergraduate peer tutors who work part time assisting students in their particular areas of difficulty.

The Bureau is "still the only office on campus that has a central listing of undergraduates that stand ready to help peers with academic work," Davis says. Last year, 359 students used the Bureau's peer tutoring services alone. The undergraduate tutors, known as Tutor Award Supervisors, are nominated by faculty members. They are closely supervised by the Bureau staff, Davis says. An additional corps of peer tutors remains on call.

The counselling staff is comprised of psychologists, former teachers, social workers and "people who are just interested in the college-age population," Davis says. There are no uniform training requirements for the counselors, but many of them have taken former Director of the Bureau Kiyo Morimoto's course at the Graduate School of Education: "Counseling: Its Psychological Assumptions and Their Expression."

Morimoto retired last June after 27 years with the Bureau. A search committee is currently in the process of finding a permanent replacement to succeed Davis, who is running the program in the interim.

"In a place where there is a disproportionately high number of talented and able students, the University would do a disservice not to help foster that creativity and expertise. We're dedicated to helping to do that fostering work," Davis says when asked what it was about Harvard that made the Bureau necessary.

Davis and Morimoto both say that the Bureau is a unique institution. "No other university has what we have at Harvard," says Morimoto. "Our whole effort is to try to understand how people learn."

Other colleges have counseling centers that deal in crisis management and require students to come forward with narrowly defined problems, Davis says. "We're unique in higher education. We're not a problem center. You can be making a B-plus in Math la and be troubled by one aspect of the course and still use the services of the Bureau," he said.