Mental Health Perspectives: Psychology Behind College Admissions Scandal

With Dr. John Huber & Kristin Walker

If you remember how damn hard you worked to get into college and how stressed you were as you waited to see where you would be accepted, then you must certainly have strong feelings about the recent college admissions scandal. Fifty people, including Full House actress Lori Loughlin and Desperate Housewives’ Felicity Huffman, were charged earlier this week in a $25 million bribery scheme to get students into top universities like Yale and Stanford.

The scheme involved cheating on college admissions tests like the SAT and ACT, as well as bribing college athletics coaches to recruit students for their teams—even though the kids weren’t competitive athletes and never intended to play. Some parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to facilitate these bribes, and many did so without their children knowing. So that leaves us with one question: Why?