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.
