College of William & Mary

College of William & Mary is the Virginia college Lara Jean Covey initially plans to attend after she is not admitted to the University of Virginia. For much of the story, it carries two meanings at once: a real place with its own attractions, and a provisional first step toward UVA, where Peter Kavinsky will enroll. Lara Jean eventually declines her place and commits to the University of North Carolina, making William & Mary the first college she chooses in a plan she later changes.

Introduction and Place in the College Decision

Lara Jean’s acceptance to William & Mary supplies a concrete alternative after UVA does not work out. Her first response is to treat that alternative as temporary. She tells Peter and later her sister Margot Song that she will spend a year at William & Mary, earn good grades, and apply to transfer to UVA. The proposal seems to reconcile a changed education plan with the hope of being at the same university as Peter, but it also means Lara Jean approaches her first college choice as a route elsewhere rather than an independent destination.

The college enters the story through conversations about where several people may go. John Ambrose McClaren says he is deciding between College Park and William & Mary: College Park appeals for its business school and proximity to Washington, while William & Mary has a higher ranking but is in what he calls the boonies. He has not yet decided, and he also mentions that his father had hoped he would attend the University of North Carolina, which did not admit him. When John asks Lara Jean where she will go if not UVA, she answers William & Mary; he responds with enthusiasm and asks where Peter will attend. Their exchange places her choice alongside the other uncertain and changing college paths of her peers.

A Provisional Route to UVA

Peter helps turn William & Mary into part of a shared plan. After telling Lara Jean that she deserves UVA too, he suggests that she attend William & Mary or another college for a year, visit him, and apply to transfer for her second year. He points to Toney Lewis, a former student who attended PVCC for two years before transferring to UVA as a junior, and argues that Lara Jean could transfer even sooner because she would already be at a four-year college. His enthusiasm makes the imagined route feel feasible and gives the couple a way to picture themselves together again after graduation.

When Lara Jean explains this plan to Margot, she says she has spoken with Mrs. Duvall, her guidance counselor, who told her that good grades at William & Mary would make a transfer to UVA a certainty. Margot questions why Lara Jean is already discussing leaving a college she has not yet attended, and asks whether Peter is the reason. The exchange exposes the distinction between being admitted to a school and choosing it: William & Mary is available to Lara Jean, but her intended timeline is organized around moving on from it.

Lara Jean and John later recognize a parallel between their plans for college and their relationships. John says he and his girlfriend intend to try a long-distance relationship; Lara Jean tells him that she and Peter have the same plan for their first year, while she intends to try to transfer to UVA for the second. Their toast to one another’s good luck briefly frames the college choice as part of a broader transition in which both students expect distance and uncertainty to test their relationships.

Imagining Life in Williamsburg

The conversations about William & Mary also give Lara Jean a chance to picture the place beyond its role as a stepping-stone. She knows the Cheese Shop near campus through its specialty food, fresh-bread roast beef sandwiches, and house dressing, and she associates Williamsburg with the outlet mall where Kitty Song likes to buy kettle corn. These small, familiar attractions make the destination imaginable through food and family outings, rather than only through rankings or transfer logistics.

Trying to enter into the possibility, Lara Jean suggests that she might work in Colonial Williamsburg, churning butter in period clothes. She wonders whether the attraction hires Asian people in the name of historical accuracy. Margot counters with the example of Phillipa Soo, who is half-Chinese and played Eliza Hamilton, and says that if the attraction refused to hire Lara Jean, the family could publicize the refusal on social media. The exchange connects an everyday employment fantasy to Lara Jean’s awareness of racial representation: even while imagining a new campus town, she anticipates how her identity might shape whether she is welcomed into its historical presentation.

This attempt to get excited does not immediately settle Lara Jean’s choice. She tells Margot that she is trying, while the conversation retains a tension between the pleasures she can picture in Williamsburg and her attachment to UVA and Peter. William & Mary is therefore neither dismissed as an unattractive option nor embraced without qualification. It is a place Lara Jean can imagine inhabiting, even as the transfer plan keeps her attention fixed on what might come after it.

The Plan Changes

A visit to Chapel Hill makes the provisional nature of the William & Mary plan newly visible. Chris asks Lara Jean why she would not spend a year at the University of North Carolina instead, since either option would leave her away from Peter and, in her estimation, the difference in distance is only about an hour. Lara Jean says she has a plan—William & Mary for a year, then UVA—but Chris points out that this is a plan shared with Peter. The challenge shifts the question from which school best supports a transfer to UVA to whether Lara Jean can allow herself to want a different place.

As Chris runs onto the lawn and turns cartwheels, Lara Jean considers the possibility that she might come to Chapel Hill and love it, and then not want to leave. She recognizes that the prospect of becoming happy there is a reason to take the chance, not a reason to rule it out. The image of two tree branches reaching across a walkway and meeting gives form to another possibility: distance from Peter need not mean emotional separation. Remembering Stormy’s advice not to say no when she really wants to say yes, Lara Jean begins to picture herself at the University of North Carolina.

Once she decides, she tells William & Mary that she will not attend and sends her deposit to the University of North Carolina. Mrs. Duvall, who is overjoyed to learn that Lara Jean will be the only student from their class going there, adds the acceptance to the school’s list and tells her she knew she would make her proud. William & Mary thus remains important as the real, initially accepted option Lara Jean actively releases: her decision does not depend on treating it as a bad school, but on recognizing that her future need not be governed by the transfer route she devised with Peter.