SANTA MONICA INDEPENDENT COLLEGE CONSULTANT
Meet your counselor,
Dr. Andrew Walzer
- Trustee Emeritus, Santa Monica College, 12 years
- Professor of Humanities at Los Angeles City College, 20 years
- Taught at Occidental College in Los Angeles and University of Minnesota
- Adjunct instructor at SMC, Cal Poly Pomona, and Cal State Dominguez Hills
- Member, American Federation of Teachers
- Member, Faculty Association of California Community Colleges
- Ph.D. in American Studies - University of Minnesota, 1997
- B.A. in Politics - University of California, Santa Cruz, 1983
Member, Independent Education Consultants Association (IECA) &
Higher Education Consultants Association (HECA)
YOU benefit from my 35 years as an academic
with college insider information
Most corporate counselors look at colleges from the outside, I spent three decades on the inside. I know exactly what colleges look for beyond the transcript. Admissions aren’t decided by algorithms, they are decided by trained academic professionals.
35 years as a Santa Monica College Trustee and Humanities Professor gave me valuable insider knowledge on exactly how they read essays, how they weigh a rocky freshman transcript, and how to maximize the communtiy college to UC pipeline to get your student accepted.
We have all heard the story of a student with a perfect 4.0 who got rejected because their application lacked a "human story" vs. a student with a 3.1 who got in because their essay was unforgettable. As a Humanities Professor, I know how to draw that story out.
Parents of students with a 2.8–3.4 GPA thinking their child's options are severely limited, with my guidance the narrative changes from panic to possibility, even when high-school grades aren’t their strongest asset.
Samohi Junior Jumpstart: Santa Monica High School is a massive public school with highly ambitious students, but like most public schools, its College & Career Center is incredibly impacted. Official college planning meetings there are strictly reserved for seniors in the fall, leaving juniors waiting until spring. Samohi counselors are fantastic, but they are handling hundreds of students at once. If your junior has a 2.9–3.4 GPA, they cannot afford to wait until spring to build a strategy.
Champion of the hard-working, middle-class Westside family looking for high-value, affordable elite education. Do you make "too much for financial aid but too little to pay out of pocket" - let me find you merit-aid and affordable liberal arts gems.
Santa Monica College (SMC) has been California's number one transfer institution to the University of California (UC) system for 35 consecutive years. I spent the last 25 years helping shape that exact pipeline. Don't just trust the system, trust someone who helped build UC transfer pathways.
SMC and West Los Angeles College (WLAC) students; don’t spend two hours waiting in line at the transfer center just to get a generic checklist. Get a dedicated credit audit and an airtight UC application narrative from a former Trustee. SMC has over 25,000 students, and the lines at the transfer center can be overwhelming, especially around application deadlines. Many transfer students miss out on the UC Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) simply because they miscalculated a single prerequisite module.
Advising Santa Monica High School, University High School, Loyola High School, Santa Monica Community College, Los Angeles City College students, & more.
Call, text, email, or click button to schedule your