Lara Jean Covey

Lara Jean Covey is a romantic and observant high-school senior whose imagined future has long centered on the University of Virginia, home, and Peter Kavinsky. A UVA rejection unsettles that carefully pictured life, but it also exposes the difference between wanting a familiar future and choosing among real possibilities. Across decisions about college, friendship, cultural identity, and family, Lara Jean begins to treat her future as something she can shape rather than simply the happy ending she has anticipated.

Identity and Introduction

Lara Jean is introduced through the attention she gives Peter when he does not know she is watching. She admires the straight line of his jaw and the curve of his cheekbone, but says it is the openness and niceness in his face that touches her most. At a Friday-night gathering after a winning lacrosse game, Peter is across the room playing poker with teammates while Lara Jean sits on a couch with Lucas Krapf and Pammy Subkoff. The scene establishes her as both romantic and quietly observant: her feelings are expressed not through a grand declaration but through the details she notices.

Her attachment to home shapes her college ambitions. She had expected to apply early to UVA, which she had never seriously imagined being replaced by another choice. Her guidance counselor, Mrs. Duvall, advised her to wait so the admissions committee could see her senior mid-year grades and evaluate her at what the counselor called her peak moment. Lara Jean consequently applied to five schools: UVA, William and Mary, the University of Richmond, James Madison University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. UVA was only fifteen minutes from home; William and Mary was two hours away and her second choice. Richmond and James Madison were tied for third, while UNC was the one out-of-state application, chosen as a practical alternative with a strong liberal arts program and a campus that reminded her of UVA.

College Plans and the UVA Rejection

Lara Jean’s preference for UVA is bound up with more than its proximity. She calls it home and measures every other college against its storybook campus. She also places Peter inside that ideal future. In contrast to Margot Song, whose dream has always been to go far away and see the world, Lara Jean has wanted to remain close to home. That contrast makes the college decision a question of temperament and belonging as well as academic choice.

The rejection arrives in a French class, as students log in to check their decisions. The admissions notice says that UVA has received more than 30,000 applications and, despite describing Lara Jean’s application as very strong, declines to offer her a place. She struggles to accept what she is reading, repeating to herself that it cannot be real and that she must be in a nightmare. Around her, classmates react to their own results; a joyful scream comes from down the hall, and the bell rings. Madame Hunt says that the notices usually do not arrive until after school, then looks at Lara Jean with sympathetic, almost maternal eyes. That look is what undoes her. The rejection is not merely a change in college plans: it breaks the future she had treated as nearly certain.

That night, while she and Margot watch television on a laptop in Lara Jean’s bedroom, Margot asks how she feels about UVA. Lara Jean says she is still going there, explaining that she intends to attend William and Mary for freshman year and transfer afterward if she earns good grades. She has spoken with Mrs. Duvall, who told her she would definitely get into UVA as a transfer under that condition. Margot challenges the logic of planning to leave a college Lara Jean has not yet attended, bringing the unresolved question of Peter into the conversation. Lara Jean’s proposed route keeps her original destination alive, but also shows how difficult it is for her to accept that the plan may have ended.

Relationships and Counsel

Margot is both a sister and an important sounding board. When she tells Lara Jean that she trusts her to know what is best, Lara Jean recognizes the force of that confidence: Margot’s trust helps her trust herself. Margot does not simply prescribe a decision. She advises Lara Jean to make friends of her own at college, noting that Peter will make many friends through lacrosse and that his circle may not be the people Lara Jean would choose. She urges her to find her people at a large university, so a shared romantic future will not substitute for a life and community of her own.

Margot also recommends joining the Asian association. Having attended school in another country, she regrets missing the experience of an Asian-American group and describes college as a place where people may discover their racial identity. Her advice broadens Lara Jean’s idea of preparation for college: the question is not only where to go, but which communities she can enter and what parts of herself she may have room to explore there.

Cultural Identity and Self-Expression

Lara Jean’s Asian-American identity informs her decisions in both playful and consequential ways. For a school Characters Day, she and Peter consider several couples costumes before settling on Tyler Durden and Marla Singer from Fight Club, an idea from Lara Jean’s best friend, Chris. Lara Jean initially objects that Marla is not Asian and that she follows an only-Asian-people-costumes policy. She agrees after Peter’s mother finds him a red leather jacket at an estate sale and Trina Rothschild lends Lara Jean clothes from her own wardrobe, including a black slip dress, a fake mohair jacket, and high black platform heels. The costume episode makes cultural representation part of her everyday self-fashioning: even a comic school event asks her to weigh a character’s appearance against her own sense of what she is comfortable embodying.

The possibility of working in Colonial Williamsburg brings that concern into a more explicit question of access. Lara Jean imagines churning butter in period dress, while wondering 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, they could publicize the refusal on social media. Her reassurance recasts the imagined job as a possibility Lara Jean need not dismiss in advance. The conversation also connects an unfamiliar future to specific pleasures and family routines: the Cheese Shop’s roast-beef sandwiches and mustards appeal to her father, while the outlet mall’s freshly popped kettle corn appeals to Kitty Song.

A discussion about acknowledging Lara Jean’s late mother at Trina and Dan Covey’s wedding reveals a different tension around cultural inclusion. Peter suggests that a ritual they have mentioned might be an Asian tradition; Kitty corrects him that it is Thai, not Korean. Margot objects that Trina is not Asian and should not appropriate Asian culture simply because the family is. Lara Jean resists that conclusion: Trina wants them to feel included and has asked whether the wedding might acknowledge their mother. Margot replies that Trina did not know her. Lara Jean’s response holds open the possibility that an act of remembrance can matter to the family even when the person proposing it did not share the mother’s past.

Change and Narrative Significance

Lara Jean’s story is shaped by the distance between an idealized plan and a future that remains unsettled. UVA represents home, an admired campus, and a life imagined with Peter; its rejection forces her to confront the vulnerability of tying so many hopes to one outcome. Her immediate plan to transfer preserves the old destination, while Margot’s questions and advice press her to consider what she wants beyond following Peter or returning to a predetermined vision of home.

The character’s perspective also makes ordinary choices carry questions of belonging. College means finding friends and an Asian-American community; a costume raises the issue of representation; a possible job in Colonial Williamsburg brings racial inclusion into view; and wedding customs become a debate over who can help remember a mother. These concerns do not resolve into a single rule for Lara Jean. Instead, they show her negotiating her identity in conversation with sisters and friends, while learning that making a future can require both keeping cherished attachments and examining the assumptions built into them.