Joel Ontiveros
Former UCLA Assistant Director of Admission & Collegewise Counselor
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.
Kate Strzelecki
Collegewise Counselor & Former Argosy Assistant Director of Admission
Kate is what we fondly call a "lifer" In the field of admissions. She has over a decade of experience working in higher education; first at Hawaii Pacific University and later at NYU. She has read thousands of applications and rendered countless admission decisions for students across the country. While she loved the work, she eventually decided that serving as the gatekeeper for an institution was not where her passion lay so she jumped to the other side of the desk and has been counseling students through the highly competitive admissions process ever since.
