Peter Baxter

Peter Baxter is Founder and CEO of Sempervirens College Counseling, where he maintains a very focused limited caseload as an independent college counselor in his eleventh year advising applicants and their families. He provides personalized guidance through college admissions while pursuing advanced studies in psychology, having completed the UC Berkeley Post-Baccalaureate Program in Psychology and currently working in an addiction neuroscience lab as he prepares for a PhD in Clinical Psychology. His research interests include understanding, predicting and treating maladaptive substance use and co-occurring psychopathology, causal inference, thoughtful statistics, bridging person-specific and shared frameworks, community-informed research design with lived experience collaboration and helping humanity navigate technological transitions.

From July 2021 to February 2023, Peter served as Associate Director of College Counseling at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California. He worked as College Counselor at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose from June 2019 to June 2021 and at Jesuit High School of Tampa from August 2016 to May 2019. From July 2014 to July 2015, he was an Admissions Counselor at University of Notre Dame, covering territories including Central America, Florida and the Carolinas. His international experience includes Associate Director of Marketing and Sales at Ivyuan Education Development in Shanghai from October 2015 to July 2016. Other roles include President of the Notre Dame Club of the San Francisco Bay Area from March to September 2023, Manager in Training at Hillstone Restaurant Group from August 2013 to July 2014, English Teacher at Maitri NGO in Pune, India from June to August 2012, and Intern on the U.S. House Committee on the Budget from June to August 2011.

Peter holds a BA in Political Science and Chinese from University of Notre Dame, where he served as Admissions Tour Guide, participated in Glee Club and Notre Dame Undertones a cappella. He speaks multiple languages including Spanish at native or bilingual proficiency, Chinese at limited working proficiency, Arabic, French, Hindi and Italian at elementary proficiency. His multilingual capabilities and international experience make him particularly effective for students with global interests or applying from diverse backgrounds.

Services Offered

• Strategic ambitious practical balanced college list development
• Real time essay editing and revision through live conversations
• Comprehensive question answering across all communication channels
• Intensive mock admissions interviews with mental reference model building
• Activities list guidance throughout high school career
• College application project management and timeline execution
• Financial aid considerations and planning discussions
• Academic course selection decisions for all high school years
• College choice discernment sounding board support