Don’t go to college with a boyfriend

“Don’t go to college with a boyfriend” is a piece of inherited advice that frames the tension between romantic commitment and the independence associated with starting college. For Lara Jean Covey, it is not an abstract maxim: it comes from her mother and her older sister, Margot Song, and becomes a measure against which she weighs her relationship with Peter Kavinsky and the uncertain routes into adulthood taken by the people around her.

Origin and Meaning

The rule appears in its sharper, more personal form when Lara Jean recalls, “Don’t be the girl who goes to college with a boyfriend.” She identifies it as something both her mother and Margot said. Its wording casts the choice as a warning about a recognizable social role: a girl who enters college already attached may miss the chance to have a freshman experience on her own terms.

Lara Jean later explains the concern as a fear of losing out on “a true freshman experience.” The rule therefore carries both practical and emotional force. It asks her to protect the independence of her next life stage, but it also risks making a relationship itself seem like an obstacle to growing up. The story leaves those two meanings in tension rather than treating the advice as an unquestionable law.

College Plans and Alternative Paths

The advice takes shape amid uncertainty over where Lara Jean will study. Peter imagines that she can begin at another college and transfer to the University of Virginia the following year, where he believes she belongs. He points to a former lacrosse player who transferred to the university and presents transfer admission as a possible route. Lara Jean has not considered that option before and is still adjusting to the fact that she will not initially attend the University of Virginia.

The surrounding conversations widen the idea of a single, fixed college timetable. Chris plans to take a year off, work on farms in Costa Rica, and consider other jobs abroad; later, she wonders whether she might be missing out by not going to college alongside her peers. Lara Jean reassures her that college will remain available next year or later. Their exchange makes the rule’s emphasis on a freshman experience less absolute: people can reach college on different schedules, and a delayed or changed route need not close off the future.

Lara Jean also tries to picture an ordinary life in Williamsburg, including the possibility of working at Colonial Williamsburg. She wonders whether the attraction would be open to an Asian employee in a historical setting, and Margot encourages her to imagine that future rather than dismiss it. These plans do not settle Lara Jean’s relationship, but they show that choosing a future involves more than deciding whether to stay with a boyfriend: it also means forming a life, community, and sense of belonging beyond the couple.

Family Advice and Growing Independence

The rule sits alongside other guidance about becoming an adult. As Lara Jean prepares for Beach Week after graduation, her father worries about unsupervised teenagers in a boys’ house. Trina Rothschild counters that Lara Jean is no longer a child and that the trip is practice for living independently in a few months. Her advice is concrete rather than prohibitive: she recommends a buddy system so that one friend remains sober enough to look after the other. In this scene, adult guidance recognizes risk while allowing Lara Jean room to act.

Margot’s counsel likewise combines trust with a call for self-direction. She tells Lara Jean to make her own friends at college, find her people, and join the Asian association, describing the college search for racial identity as an experience she missed while studying in another country. She says she trusts Lara Jean to know what is best. The advice against taking a boyfriend to college thus belongs to a larger family conversation about independence: not simply separating from a relationship, but building friendships and an identity that do not depend on it.

The Rule Under Emotional Pressure

After Beach Week, Lara Jean is reluctant to tell Margot what has happened with Peter. She wants her sister to take her burdens and tell her what to do, yet she knows what Margot would advise because Margot has already followed the principle herself. The recollection brings the rule close to the emotional center of the story: Lara Jean is not merely considering a general warning but confronting advice that comes from someone whose judgment she trusts.

Trina later tells Lara Jean that Peter’s mother had wanted her to break up with Peter before he changed his life for Lara Jean. Lara Jean acknowledges the concern about him transferring for her, then connects it to her mother’s warning against going to college with a boyfriend. Trina responds that Lara Jean’s mother never met Peter and might have judged differently had she known him. Lara Jean admits that she regrets breaking up with him and wishes she could undo it. The exchange complicates the rule without erasing its concern: protecting a young person’s independence and judging a particular relationship are not necessarily the same decision.

The maxim’s significance lies in that unresolved balance. It gives Lara Jean language for a fear shared across generations, but it does not make the choice for her. In the story, advice can be inherited, questioned, and weighed against the actual people and futures at stake; growing up means learning when a rule clarifies a decision and when it cannot substitute for one.