In order to get her study card signed by a faculty adviser, Shayna L. Strom, a junior at Yale University, had to bike down to Yale Medical School, drop it off with her adviser's secretary, and hope her form would eventually be signed by an adviser she had never seen.

Though this is an extreme example, stories like Strom's reflect an Ivy League-wide problem. The struggle to adequately advise students is common in selective schools--and it's a problem that Harvard students and administrators mutually acknowledge.

With the recent release of his five-year report, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 publicly recognized problems with advising in the College.

Lewis's concerns come from data collected by questionnaires given to graduating seniors. What he found was less than encouraging.

"Academic guidance, particularly in several large departments, is at a level below the reasonable expectations of both students and faculty," Lewis writes.

Further, many students have reported a disappointment with the usefulness of their first-year advisers, saying that advisers often have little knowledge of the students' fields of interest.

"In spite of vigorous efforts, there are more failures on both sides than we would like: departments barely able to manage concentrators who have already committed to them and are therefore less forthcoming with advice for freshmen, and freshmen reluctant to venture out to make inquiries of departments when they barely know what questions to ask," Lewis writes.

Responding to Lewis's report, as well as a general consensus among Harvard students and Faculty that advising needs work, the Committee on Undergraduate Education recently sent out a letter to freshmen giving tips on how to get questions answered.