College of William and Mary

The College of William and Mary is Lara Jean Covey’s second-choice college, an attractive and relatively close alternative to her long-preferred University of Virginia. After UVA rejects her, William and Mary admits her; Lara Jean initially treats enrollment there as a temporary route toward transferring to UVA, then begins to face the possibility of making a life in Williamsburg in its own right.

Place in Lara Jean’s College Plans

Lara Jean applies to five schools after her guidance counselor advises her not to apply early to UVA, so admissions officers can consider her senior-year midyear grades. Her list begins with UVA, fifteen minutes from home, and William and Mary, her second choice and two hours away. The University of Richmond and James Madison University are tied for third; at her counselor’s urging, she adds the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an out-of-state option. She chooses UNC partly because its strong liberal arts program and distance from home resemble the qualities she associates with UVA.

Even while considering those alternatives, Lara Jean measures every college against UVA. She thinks of it as home, an idealized campus and a future that would keep her near family and Peter Kavinsky. William and Mary is appealing, but initially it does not carry the same sense of inevitability. That distinction makes the school more than a second choice: it is the alternative against which Lara Jean has to test her assumptions about where she belongs.

Admission and the Transfer Plan

When Peter learns that he has been admitted to UVA, he worries that Lara Jean should have been the one to get in. He quickly proposes a workaround: she could attend another college for a year and then apply to UVA as a transfer, a path he believes will be easier than entering as a first-year student. He recalls that Toney Lewis transferred to UVA after two years at PVCC and imagines Lara Jean joining him there after her freshman year. Lara Jean has not considered transferring before, but she is still adjusting to the prospect of not going to UVA.

William and Mary is the first of her applications to bring welcome news. An admissions email offers her a place at the College of William and Mary. Peter leaps up, swings her around, and announces the acceptance to the people at their table; they cheer with him. The moment brings immediate relief, even though it does not displace UVA as Lara Jean’s preferred destination.

By the end of the week, she has also been admitted to James Madison and the University of Richmond. She nevertheless settles on William and Mary, picturing its pretty, small campus in Williamsburg and noting that it is less than two hours from home. Her intended arrangement remains provisional: she will work hard there for a year, transfer to UVA, and rejoin Peter. In her mind, admission makes the first part of that plan possible rather than resolving where she ultimately wants to be.

Belonging and the Possibility of Staying

After Margot Song returns, Lara Jean explains that she intends to transfer from William and Mary after her freshman year and says her counselor believes good grades there would secure a transfer to UVA. Margot challenges the timetable: Lara Jean is planning to leave before she has even arrived. Asked whether Peter is the reason, Lara Jean admits that he is part of it, but not the whole explanation. She also says that her visit to William and Mary did not produce the feeling of being meant to be there that she associates with UVA.

Margot encourages her to look for reasons to anticipate Williamsburg rather than treating it only as a stop on the way elsewhere. Lara Jean tries on that idea through the town’s attractions: the family likes the Cheese Shop, and Kitty Song enjoys the outlet mall’s freshly popped kettle corn. She even imagines working in Colonial Williamsburg, churning butter in period clothes, while wondering whether the site would hire an Asian person in the name of historical accuracy. Margot counters that representation need not exclude her, invoking Phillipa Soo’s casting as Eliza Hamilton and promising to publicize any refusal. The exchange connects Lara Jean’s tentative effort to embrace William and Mary with a broader question of who gets to inhabit the histories and spaces around it.

College as One Possible Timeline

William and Mary also sits within a set of different, sometimes unsynchronized paths into adulthood. Chris plans to take a year off, work on farms for room and board, and consider other possibilities abroad rather than begin college alongside her friends. Lara Jean tells her that college will still be there next year or whenever she chooses, while Chris can picture Lara Jean at UNC. Lara Jean answers by repeating her own plan: one year at William and Mary, then UVA. Their exchange presents college choices as routes that can be delayed, revised, or imagined differently rather than a single schedule everyone must follow.

The anticipated departure from home gives that schedule practical weight. Dan Covey is uneasy about Lara Jean spending Beach Week in a house with boys and no adult supervision, but Trina Rothschild points out that Lara Jean will soon live on her own and calls the trip practice. William and Mary, like the beach trip, belongs to the transition from being a daughter at home to managing life away from it; the prospect of leaving is negotiated within the family rather than treated as a clean break.

Family, Culture, and the Meaning of Home

The family’s cultural ties also shape what leaving for college means. During a discussion about Trina and Dan’s wedding, Margot objects to the idea of using an Asian tradition merely because the Covey sisters are Asian, particularly when Trina is not. Lara Jean responds that Trina wants them to feel included and has considered acknowledging their mother. Elsewhere, Margot describes Korean food as a vital link to Korean culture and hopes Trina will understand that marrying Dan means accepting the family’s connection to Korea. Lara Jean answers that the sisters will be able to eat Korean food every day during their summer trip.

For graduation, Dan gives the three sisters a month in Korea with their grandmother. They will spend all of July there, stay with a great-aunt in Seoul, take Korean-language classes, tour places including Jeju and Busan, and attend a Korean pastry-making class arranged especially for Lara Jean. The trip recalls their late mother’s wish to take them to Korea and offers Lara Jean an experience that belongs to her sisters’ shared family history. Against that wider sense of home, William and Mary’s nearness to Williamsburg and to the family makes it an imaginable place to begin, even while Lara Jean continues to hold it inside a plan that points toward UVA.