This article presents the Institutional Program of Psychological Counselling to Academic Tutoring (IPPCAT), which arose in 2009 from the changes in the admission policies to the Universidad de Panama. The main objective is to provide students who require counseling and psychological support to stimulate and reinforce, through individual and/or group assistance, the skills needed to meet the challenges at higher learning. The problems that freshmen face have demonstrated the need for academic and psycho-education support to meet cognitive and psychosocial adjustment requirements that enable them to overcome the demand level of university education and their integral education as future professionals. PIAPTA is conceived as a strategy that complements the academic work of tutoring within the educational process of students who start a university education for the first time.