University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews is Margot Song’s university in Scotland, and its distance from home makes it a recurring point of reference in the family’s changing life. Five hours and 3,500 miles separate Margot from Lara Jean, yet their video calls keep sisterly counsel and ordinary companionship within reach; the university stands for the independence of leaving home without severing one’s ties to it.

Margot’s life at a distance

During an afternoon at the Covey kitchen table, Lara Jean decorates Easter eggs while Margot joins her by video from her dorm room at the University of St Andrews. Lara Jean’s laptop is balanced on cookbooks amid bowls of dye, rhinestones, stickers, and saved feathers. Their conversation concerns the pink or gold glitter for an egg bearing a cameo of Marie Antoinette, but the scene’s domestic intimacy is set against the thousands of miles between them. Margot helps Lara Jean choose pink, remaining part of a family activity even when she cannot be there in person.

The distance also shapes how the sisters imagine leaving home. Lara Jean observes that Margot had to be careful about what she took to Scotland because she could not return often. If Lara Jean attends the University of Virginia, she expects to leave seasonal belongings at home and exchange them as the weather changes. Margot’s experience abroad thus becomes a practical measure of what distance entails: packing decisions, infrequent visits, and the need to make a faraway place into a life.

Education and cultural belonging

Margot’s time at the University of St Andrews has also clarified something she feels she missed by studying in another country: an Asian-American student group. She urges Lara Jean to join the Asian association at college and describes finding racial identity in college as an important experience. Her advice connects education not only with choosing a school or making friends, but with finding people who share a cultural frame of reference. St Andrews is presented as the setting of Margot’s own college experience, while her reflection gives that experience a specific absence she hopes Lara Jean will not inherit.

Lara Jean’s concerns about whether an Asian person would be hired to portray a historical character at Colonial Williamsburg sharpen the contrast between cultural identity and institutional expectations. Margot counters that contemporary casting already allows for a broader understanding of who can represent history, and promises to publicize discrimination if Lara Jean is refused. The episode is not about St Andrews directly, but it echoes the cultural question Margot raises from her experience abroad: college and public life can make identity more visible, while belonging depends on whether institutions and communities make room for it.

Family ties across distance

Although Margot’s education places her far away, the novel repeatedly frames her as an active presence in the family’s transitions. She advises Lara Jean about choosing friends at a large university, reassuring her that Peter’s lacrosse connections need not determine her own social circle. Their call moves from a small decision about glitter to a serious conversation about Lara Jean’s future, and Margot’s confidence helps Lara Jean affirm that the University of Virginia is right for her.

The family’s later plans for a July trip to Korea likewise show how education abroad and family separation coexist with shared cultural inheritance. Dan explains that the sisters will stay with their great-aunt in Seoul, take Korean-language classes, tour places including Jeju and Busan, and attend a Korean pastry-making class. Margot anticipates shopping with Lara Jean and watching Korean dramas together. The trip is not a visit to St Andrews, but it places Margot’s life away from home within a wider pattern: distance changes how the sisters share daily life, while family travel and cultural learning create new occasions for being together.

Significance

The University of St Andrews is established through its consequences in family life rather than through institutional description. The text gives no account of its courses, history, or campus beyond Margot’s dorm room in Scotland. Instead, it makes the university legible as a site of separation, independence, and reflection: Margot cannot come home often, yet she remains close enough to help Lara Jean make choices and to articulate what she values about finding community. Its importance lies in this double condition—distance is real, but it does not end the work of belonging to a family or seeking cultural connection.