By Staff Writer Ben Pfeffer.

You almost definitely have heard of the College Admissions Scandal.

For those of you who haven’t, it was happening over the past decade and it was when rich and/or famous parents would illegally bribe colleges in order to get their children into top schools.

It has been recently discovered that a few famous individuals have been involved in this multi-million-dollar scam to bribe colleges for their children to be admitted.

Famous people you may know are Felicity Huffman from Desperate Housewives and Lori Laughlin from Full House.

Dozens of parents have been indicted for being involved with this scam. In this scam they have spent $25 million in bribes and in coordinating with college coaches, exam administers, and admissions counselors to get their children into top schools like Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and USC.

The children of these parents did not seem aware that this was happening.
Felicity Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy, allegedly disguised a $15,000 bribe as a charitable donation in order to have their daughter participate in a scam to cheat on the SAT.

This would be done by claiming a disability so that you could have an SAT administrator come to your home and administer the test from there. At this point, they would bribe the administrator and hire somebody that takes a perfect (1600) SAT to take the SAT and say it was somebody else.

Lori Laughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, allegedly paid $50,000 to get her two daughters designated as recruits for USC’s crew team, despite the fact that neither daughter played the sport.

This all couldn’t have been done by themselves, right? That’s right.

There was a mastermind to this whole plan named William Singer. Singer was 58 years old and ran a college prep company called The Edge College & Career Network, nicknamed The Key. The Key helped facilitate most of the scheming.
Singer claimed he wanted to create a side door for wealthy families to get their kids into top colleges.

He was paid $25 million by parents to help their children get into the schools.
Schools are attempting to distance themselves from this scam by punishing those at the universities that were involved.

USC fired their senior associate athletic director and their water polo coach, both of whom were involved in this mass scheme.

They have also placed a staff member on leave who was named as a parent in the indictment. USC plans to use all of the money received in connection to this scandal to fund scholarships for underprivileged kids.

UCLA has put its men’s soccer coach on leave in connection with the scandal because he faces a charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering.

Racketeering is where a someone uses a business to illegally gain money from other people.

Universities like Stanford, Georgetown, Yale, Wake Forest, University of Texas at Austin, and University of San Diego have all made actions similar to USC and UCLA to attempt to distance themselves from the coaches and staff involved in this scandal and attempt to make right with the money gained.

This scandal in itself isn’t too bad because it didn’t involve that many students.
That being said, it truly shows us how flawed the college admissions system is and what qualities define college acceptances.

Money can buy anything. This case shows that it does not matter the academic level or athletic ability of a student that accepts them into top universities in the United States.
This scandal has displayed how there truly isn’t a level playing field for students.

The parents are teaching their children that cheating is acceptable, and if you cheat at life then you win.