[junar]

I agree that she's probably made some mistakes with her image across her college application essays, and that publicizing with the WSJ is unlikely to do her any favors either.

Applying to multiple Ivy and other top-ranked schools is fairly common. "Business" isn't a super specialized academic area, so I doubt any of the top schools are going to be that much better or worse than the others.

UT Austin has competitive admissions for certain majors, regardless of automatic admission to the school. The article notes that she only got accepted to the school, not her preferred major.

In the end, I think the biggest mistake is setting her sights too high. She should have known that she could have been rejected from most of these schools, and she could have applied to more schools on a similar level as UT Austin.