Esther Elizabeth Reed, 30, pleaded guilty to fraud on Tuesday. The woman stole the identity of a missing woman from South California because she wanted to attend an Ivy League School as to escape her painful past.

Reed pleaded guilty of theft charges in federal court in Greenville and she faces nearly 47 years in prison together with $1 million for ID theft, mail fraud and loan fraud charges. Ann Marie Fritz, Reed’s lawyer, said that the woman wanted to apologize in front of the jury, but her desire was denied.

As U.S. District Judge Henry M. Herlong said, Reed must wait for her sentence which hasn’t yet been established its date. Reed used Brooke Henson’s identity last year to get into Columbia University. Henson was missing since 1999 and Reed took advance of this even though officials think she wasn’t involved in the woman’s disappearance.

Reed’s lawyer also said that Reed wanted to apologize for giving false hopes to Henson’s family when she was discovered in New York. Still, besides the fact that Reed seems to have stolen Henson’s identity to shed her painful past, the lawyer didn’t comment about any details.

Yet, this wasn’t Reed’s first try to get into Columbia University as she used other six false identities since March 2001 to fulfill her wish of getting into the Ivy League School in Columbia. Since 2004, she has been using Henson’s name and she began attending the university and get student loans.

Two years later, the authorities caught her in New York but Reed insisted that she was Henson and answered correctly to some family questions. Her eager to prove she was truly Henson stopped when she was asked to take the DNA test.

Reed ran away but authorities caught her a year later and arrested her in suburban Chicago in February.