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Felicity Huffman’s Daughter Gets Into Top School On Her Own Following College Bribery Scandal
Felicity Huffman admitted paying $15,000 to rig her daughter’s SAT scores in order to increase her chances of getting into a good school.
Felicity Huffman’s daughter has been accepted into a prestigious university, just about a year after Huffman was charged with rigging her SAT scores to help her get into college.
Sophia Macy, 19, announced that she’d been accepted into Carnegie Mellon University’s drama program by changing her Instagram biography to read “CMU Drama ’24.” PEOPLE has since confirmed the news, with an unnamed source stating, “Felicity is so proud and grateful that Sophia has kept her chin up over the last year. It was a painful, challenging time and she pulled through it with strength and grace.”
Huffman, 56, was one of dozens of well-off parents accused of participating in a bribery scheme that involved paying thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of dollars to help their children gain admittance into top-tier universities. Huffman was accused of spending $15,000 to the mastermind behind the ruse, William “Rick” Singer, to have her daughter Sophia’s SAT scores changed by a test proctor. She pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.
In September, she was sentenced to two weeks in jail and ordered to pay thousands of dollars in fines and complete hundreds of hours of community service.
In a letter read to the court, Huffman — who shares her two daughters with actor William H. Macy — said that her actions stemmed from the fear of being a “bad mother.”
“In my desperation to be a good mother I talked myself into believing that all I was doing was giving my daughter a fair shot,” her letter read. “I see the irony in that statement now because what I have done is the opposite of fair. I have broken the law, deceived the educational community, betrayed my daughter, and failed my family.”
Although Huffman agreed to cheat on her eldest daughter’s scores, she later decided against going the same route with her younger daughter, Georgia, she said. Sophia Macy retook her SATs following the scandal, according to Page Six.
Huffman ultimately served 11 days out of the two-week prison sentence in October, and her response to the case has been applauded by officials involved in the case. Andrew Lelling, the U.S Attorney for Massachusetts, praised Huffman for her conduct during an interview with WCVB last year, remarking, “She took responsibility almost immediately, she was contrite, did not try to minimize her conduct. I think she handled it in a very classy way.”
Conversely, “Full House” actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, have maintained their innocence and have pleaded not guilty to the various charges against them. The couple have been accused of paying $500,000 to have their daughters admitted into the University of Southern California as crew team recruits, even going as far as having them pose in athletic gear on rowing machines for photos — despite neither being a student athlete.
Their trial is slated to begin in October.
