Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty to some charges last year as part of Operation Varsity Blues. Felicity – and her husband William H. Macy – had schemed with Rick Singer to change her daughters’ SAT scores. The oldest daughter, Sophia, took her SATs as planned and then Singer’s guy changed several of the answers so Sophia would get a higher score. Felicity paid $15,000 for this illegal service. When she pleaded guilty, she assumed total responsibility and emphasized that her daughters had no idea what she was doing, which I believed. Felicity ended up getting sentenced to 14 days in jail, and she only served 11 days before being released.
Following Felicity’s brief prison stay, her youngest daughter Georgia ended up getting accepted into Vassar, one of the Seven Sisters. There were plans afoot to falsify Georgia’s SAT scores, but ultimately her school records were untouched by Felicity’s schemes and it was only Sophia who got hit with it. But good news, I guess: Sophia was able to retake her SATs and now she’s being accepted into Carnegie Mellon:
Felicity Huffman didn’t believe her oldest daughter had what it took to get into her first-choice college, so she tried to cheat on her behalf by paying $15,000 to have her SAT answers covertly corrected. Huffman served 11 days in jail for the plot. But Sophia Macy — who had no idea about Huffman’s scheme — has triumphantly proven that she could do it all by herself.
A source told Page Six that Sophia, 19, retook her SAT — and that she’s been accepted to prestigious Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. On Sunday, the young actress posted the school’s logo and two smiley heart emojis to Instagram Stories. She also added “CMU Drama ’24” to her bio.
In a letter to the judge for her part in the notorious cheating scandal, Huffman wrote, “When my daughter looked at me and asked with tears streaming down her face, ‘Why didn’t you believe in me? Why didn’t you think I could do it on my own?’ I had no adequate answer for her. I could only say, ‘I am sorry.’ ”
Sophia — whose father is William H. Macy — has appeared in Jordan Peele’s “The Twilight Zone.” The couple’s younger daughter, Georgia, 18, is going to Vassar in the fall.
One of the things that has always killed me about the Varsity Blues scheme is that these parents were almost entirely white, wealthy and well-connected, and they could have legitimately provided their kids with amazing opportunities, internships and networking skills which would have helped on any college application. Sophia and Georgia were always going to have a leg up in applying for colleges simply because of their parents and their family wealth. If Felicity and William H. Macy had used their wealth of connections to secure their daughters with high-profile charity work or internships, that would have also been a huge thing on their applications. Anyway, water under the bridge. I’m glad these two young women found a way to get into college on their own merits. They, uh, make Lori Loughlin’s daughters look pretty vapid.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
Legitimately?
Yeaaaahhhh…. somehow I will NEVER believe they got into those schools on their own “merit”, esp. considering their scores were bad enough for bribery intervention in the first place.
They were probably under a lot of scrutiny considering what happened, so I believe it. You could turn it around. If they were capable of getting in on their own, it means they are not total fools. Why on earth would you consider messing with their scores?
I imagine some of these people while having dinner and a little too much to drink and a little too motivated to impress each other were telling each other and just thought it was just marvelous. Well. Now you have a nice record to show for it.
It’s the drama program. (Which, for the record, is very highly regarded, especially the musical theater concentration.)
So I do believe it, because admission would be based more on audition than test scores.
Read an article from a former college admissions officer. The people who go to the top of the list to be admitted are those whose parents can pay full tuition. So this wasn’t ALL merit.
Sophia appeared in Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone and that kind of work experience matters. Parents who can mentor matters. Paying the full cost of admission matters. Courting potential future donors to the department matters.
I’m glad they were able to get in on their own merits. The parental behavior here had to be a big blow to their egos, so to be able to do it on their own has to be a nice response to the lack of faith. Good luck to them.
While I don’t disagree with you, admissions committees will look at who her parents are and, whatever they might say publicly, that is definitely a factor in admission. It’s cheap PR for the university. Of course, the student’s grades, test scores, extracurriculars, and application materials play a role, but in these cases, the parents’ names help (she’s going for the CM theater program). I’m sure, as with so many other colleges, the fact that they can pay full tuition also plays a role.
Yeah, I’m sure paying the full bill puts you up there in the yes column. Especially as I’m assuming neither of those schools are inexpensive.
Given the circumstances, I expect CM was careful to make sure her admission would withstand scrutiny re: grades, test scores, etc., even with who her parents are and paying full tuition.
Her first choice though was Juilliard. As I recall, she’d already applied and been accepted for an audition, before the scandal broke. Possibly the best drama program in the country and definitely one of the most prestigious. So, you wonder what went into getting her to that point in their process.
She was on the plane headed to NYC for that audition when she got an email that it was cancelled. Have to feel for her on that one, must have been awful to think she might possibly have gotten in if not for her mom.
Good for Georgia & Sophia! Felicity didn’t believe in her kids and they proved her wrong. Lori’s daughters are vapid. End of story.
LMAO, how naive.
Pretty sure having famous parents had something to do indirectly with her acceptance. Nepotism can do wonders. Hope they all learned a lesson or maybe not
Leave the kids alone. It isn’t their fault that they had a helicopter mom (and a a dad who probably just nodded his head in agreement to shut the wife up).
They are in and unfortunately they will have to go through four years of college with some their fellow students and teachers snarking on them and questioning their worth. I mean how would you like to publicly humiliated at age 17 or so. They didn’t ask for that.
I wish them the best.
I don’t think anyone is harassing the kids, although I guess time will tell if her future classmates are resentful, but it’s extremely unfortunate that Felicity had to sabotage her daughter’s educational experience so badly.
I feel bad for them. I believe they didn’t know what their parents were doing, but now EVERYONE knows. I’m sure some other drama students would have always resented her just by her parents being famous actors, but now all this mess on top of it. I hope she does well and proves herself worthy of a spot in the program, and that her classmates are kind.
Lori’s daughters are vapid but they never wanted to be anything but vapid. The oldest one admitted she didn’t care about school. They wanted to be “influencers” like Kylie Jenner.
I think all of the parents in this look far more vapid than their children. All of them committed these crimes because they didn’t have faith in their children’s intelligence and wanted them to go down a very specific path that included a college education from a prestige school. Correct me if I’m wrong but all of the colleges involved were considered elite, right? It wasn’t about the education or the experience for their children, it was about making the parents look good. God knows the shame of graduating from a state school or getting certified in a trade is just too mortifying for words… It’s what any parent would do for their kids *eyeroll*
I found it particularly distasteful for LL’s husband (I won’t Google the correct spelling of his name because what they did is disgusting/I am lazy) to justify the bribery by saying something like, “They need to do better than ASU.” That’s rude and offensive because ASU is a great four-year school, has standards for admission just like every other public four-year institution (so no guarantee his vapid princesses would be admitted there), and it would be a hell of a lot better to go there honestly and make the most of it (which is what a lot of education is— making the most of what you’re given), than to cheat and bribe your kids’ way into a different school that honestly isn’t that much better. USC does have high tuition. But it’s not an Ivy League so I can’t believe the hubris of his comparison. It’s unbelievable how elitist their motivations were.
PS. I didn’t go to ASU but know that while many view it as a “party” school, there are plenty of great programs there, it’s affordable, academically very diverse, it’s public, and does a lot for the state of Arizona.
Good for her, and I hope it was legitimately earned, but maybe it might have been best if this was kept off social media. It’s too bad her mom is too blame, but what’s done is done and now we’re all skeptical….keep your news to yourselves so we’re not all side-eyeing you.
With 2 famous actor parents, she would have gotten into CM’s drama school with no problems. They could have saved themselves a lot of grief, drama, money, jail time, and humiliation.
It’s hard to believe that these two girls got into Carnegie Mellon and Vassar based on their own merits alone now. It sucks because doubt and disbelief will now follow them wherever they go which isn’t fair because all celebrity kids get into good schools on name recognition alone. But there’s double the scrutiny because we know her mom went the extra mile to doctor her test results.
Agreed. I don’t think most people realize just how hard it is to get into those two schools. not only do you have to be in the top couple students in your class, you have to prove a number of major accomplishments. For example, running cross country isn’t enough, you have to have been your state champion. Or for fine arts, you have to have earned national honors of some sort. And also developed an app or started a some sort of business. Seriously! I’m guessing people will always side-eye the admissions of these two.
I feel bad for kids like these who apparently genuinely wanted to earn a spot at a university (not the two vapid LL kids who couldn’t be bothered to respect education and played along with the rowing scandal). How humiliating. At the same time, if they were truly underprepared, I strongly question if they will finish their respective programs. If they truly have the merit to meet admission requirements, they will. Getting in is only half the battle. So we will have to check back in in four years.
What I can’t figure out is why, if these parents cared so damn much, they couldn’t be bothered to intervene in their kids’ education earlier, and in an ethical and legal fashion, to improve their chances of success?
Yeah BS. Without mommy and daddy’s cash they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere on their own. I only respect kids who get full scholarships to these places. Everyone else basically just pays their way in legitimately.