We Need to Talk About the College Admissions Situation on ‘Riverdale’

You’re trying to tell me these kids are smart enough to get into Harvard?

On tonight’s episode of Riverdale, the main characters started to figure out what their future will hold. No, it had nothing to do with the various serial killers running around Riverdale that could end their lives at any minute. It was something much more terrifying than that: college acceptance season. There are many ridiculous things about this show, but the portrayal of the admissions process might just take the cake.

We’ve already discussed that it’s pretty unlikely that any of the Riverdale kids actually had any time to apply to college, but now that acceptances are officially happening, it seems even more unrealistic.

First, there’s Veronica. Are we supposed to expect that after all that school she skipped while trying to solve crimes and take down her father’s business empire, she still got good enough grades to get into HARVARD? The most competitive school in the entire country? The girl runs a speakeasy. I don’t think that counts as a Harvard-approved extracurricular activity. She also treated Yale like a safety school, which is pretty absurd, and brings us to Betty.

It’s going to be really awkward that Veronica is going to Yale, because Betty was rejected from that same school. The weirder part, though, was when Betty’s mom kept saying Betty “Didn’t get into college.” Was Yale the only school she applied to? She really applied to one Ivy League college and called it a day? That can’t be true, right? Smart people don’t apply to just one college! Also, state schools exist!!

If Betty did apply to more than one school, it’s kind of rude of her mom to act like she only had one option, and got rejected, so now she’s a failure. There is so much absurdity in this one plot line.

Maybe the most realistic part of the episode, though, was the reveal that Archie didn’t plan on going to college at all, and Jughead hadn’t even applied. College is great, sure, but it’s also not for everyone. If you don’t want to go to a four-year university, you should do yourself a favor and save the tens of thousands of dollars it requires to go to one. More power to ya!

After four long seasons, the biggest twist of Riverdale might be that Archie and Jughead are the smartest people on this show, even if they didn’t get into Harvard (looking at you, Veronica).