Joel Ontiveros
Former UCLA Assistant Director of Admission
Joel Ontiveros has been reading UC applications for eight years. He attended UCLA and got his first job out of college working as an Admissions Officer and then as an Assistant Director for his alma mater. Eventually he joined the Banana Slugs at UC Santa Cruz where he worked as a Regional Admissions Representative and primarily recruited out of state. Joel was pleasantly surprised to find out that UCLA (the most applied to university in the country) actually has humans read every application at least twice. He believes in the transformative power of the UC system - even with all its quirks and issues.
Charles Lu
Former Director at UC San Diego, Associate Dean at Johns Hopkins University, and Executive Director at the University of Texas at Austin
Charles has led nationally recognized student success programs and reviewed thousands of applications at institutions including Johns Hopkins, UC San Diego, and UT Austin. A first-generation college student himself, he brings both professional expertise and personal perspective to his counseling. His students have gone on to schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, and UC Berkeley, and he has particular strength in guiding multilingual, multicultural, and first-generation students, as well as those pursuing STEM, pre-health, and research-focused paths. An avid traveler who has explored over 20 countries, Charles is also the co-founder of a nonprofit supporting first-generation students.
