Lara Jean receives a rejection from UVA

Lara Jean receives a rejection from UVA in a scene that breaks open the future she had imagined: Sunday dinners at home, weekday laundry with Kitty, Peter walking her to class, and late nights studying at Clemons Library. The decision is more than an admissions result; it makes those carefully pictured routines suddenly unavailable and forces her to begin imagining what comes next without the plan she had treated as certain.

The Decision Arrives

Lara Jean has been checking her phone throughout the week, waiting for UVA’s decision. Notices are released through social media announcements directing applicants to the Student Info System, where each student must log in to learn the result. In French class, a student announces that UVA has tweeted that decisions are out. The room breaks into motion as students reach for their phones, while Madame Hunt tries to restore calm.

Lara Jean logs in with trembling hands. The notice says the university received more than 30,000 applications and that, although her application was strong, the Committee on Admission regrets to inform her that she has not been admitted. She reads the message again and realizes that she has not even been wait-listed. The blunt finality of the result leaves no intermediate possibility to hold on to.

The Future She Loses

The rejection immediately unravels a specific version of college life. Lara Jean had pictured coming home for Sunday-night dinner, doing laundry with Kitty on weeknights, having Peter walk her to class, and studying through the night at Clemons Library. These are intimate, ordinary scenes rather than grand ambitions; their familiarity is what makes their sudden disappearance hurt. She had imagined UVA not only as a university but as the setting in which family routines and her relationship with Peter could continue alongside her studies.

The timing intensifies the blow. The announcement comes during the school day, before Lara Jean is prepared to face her family, and the admission results are visible all around her. She hears a joyful scream from the hallway and sees classmates hurry out when the bell rings. Madame Hunt’s sympathetic expression, which reminds Lara Jean of a mother’s concern, undoes her composure. The contrast between other students’ celebrations and her own news makes the rejection feel exposed as well as personal.

Shock and Withdrawal

When Peter meets her in the hallway, his expression is bright and expectant; he asks for the result, and she tells him that she did not get in. He is stunned and offers to miss his away game, but Lara Jean asks him not to. She sidesteps his attempt to reach her and hurries away, promising only that she will call later. Her immediate need is to get to her car before she cries, a small act of postponement that lets her keep moving through the school even as the news has already overwhelmed her.

Once in the parking lot, she breaks down and cries through the drive home, stopping at a McDonald’s because she can barely see through her tears. The practical reality settles in: that autumn she will not be going to UVA with Peter. She also worries that everyone expected her to be admitted and will now be concerned for her. Rather than answer missed calls from her father, Margot, and Peter, she retreats to her room. Her social-media feed intensifies the sense of comparison: other students post acceptance reactions, including her cousin Haven, who got into UVA but plans to attend Wellesley, her first choice. For Haven, UVA is a safety school; for Lara Jean, its rejection is devastating.

Family and Peter Respond

After falling asleep, Lara Jean wakes in darkness and tells her father, Dan, that she did not get into UVA. He is washing dishes, his sleeves rolled up and his arms covered in soap. He turns off the faucet, comes to her on the staircase, and hugs her with wet arms. His sadness confirms that he knows how much she wanted the place, but his response offers comfort without trying to erase the loss. When Kitty expresses sympathy, Lara Jean asks her to come give her a hug. The three sit together on the stairs for a long time, Dan’s arm around Lara Jean’s shoulder and Kitty’s hand on her knee.

Peter comes to her bedroom window later, still wearing his lacrosse uniform because he has come straight from the game. He calls her rabbit eyes, a familiar nickname for the aftermath of crying, and makes her laugh. The gesture does not undo the rejection, but it briefly changes the emotional register of the day: after the stunned silence and prolonged crying, shared familiarity allows laughter back into the room. His arrival also keeps their relationship present in the very moment when Lara Jean is mourning the college future she had expected to share with him.

Identity and the Future Beyond UVA

The rejection sits within a broader set of questions about Lara Jean’s future and belonging. In advice about college, Margot tells her to make her own friends rather than rely on Peter’s lacrosse circle, to find her people at a large university, and to join the Asian association. Margot says that studying in another country left her feeling she had missed the chance to find an Asian-American group and describes college as a time when racial identity can become more salient. Her advice frames college not simply as a route to a particular campus but as a place where Lara Jean might build an independent social life and encounter community around identity.

Questions of representation recur in Lara Jean’s everyday choices. For a characters-day costume, she initially resists dressing as Marla Singer because the character is not Asian and Lara Jean has a policy of choosing costumes based on Asian people. She eventually agrees to the paired costume with Peter after his mother finds a red leather jacket and Trina lends Lara Jean clothes from her own wardrobe. The episode gives her concern a concrete form: the wish to participate in a shared activity does not make questions of racial representation disappear.

After the rejection, Lara Jean considers whether she could work in Colonial Williamsburg, churning butter in period dress, but wonders whether the attraction would be closed to her because she is Asian and historical accuracy might be used against hiring Asian people. Margot counters that the era is not sealed off from Asian performers, invoking Phillipa Soo’s portrayal of Eliza Hamilton, and says she would make the issue public if the workplace refused to hire Lara Jean. The exchange places the college disappointment alongside a continuing negotiation over where Lara Jean can belong and who gets to imagine themselves in particular settings.

That negotiation also appears in a family discussion about acknowledging Lara Jean’s late mother at Dan and Trina’s wedding. Margot objects to bringing Asian culture into the wedding simply because the sisters are Asian, especially because Trina is not Asian; Lara Jean answers that Trina wants them to feel included and had suggested acknowledging their mother. The disagreement shows that belonging is not solved by representation alone: it also depends on intention, family memory, and whether a gesture makes room for the people it concerns. Together, these recurring questions keep Lara Jean’s rejection from defining her future by itself. UVA had carried her hopes for proximity to Peter and home, but the surrounding narrative leaves open other ways to form community, sustain family ties, and choose a life that fits her.