escorts Rory when she is presented to society at a debutante ball hosted by her grandmother's chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. During her time at Chilton, Rory becomes engaged in a feud with close academic rival, Paris Geller. Though the two later become friends, the rivalry continues into their university studies. Rory reluctantly runs for student government with Paris and wins, and writes for the Chilton paper, The Franklin. When she meets Jess Mariano (Milo Ventimiglia), Rory begins to falls in love with him. They become friends first but start to date after Dean breaks up with Rory because he sees that Rory likes Jess. However, various problems make their relationship difficult. After Jess skips school to go to work at Walmart, causing him to be unable to graduate or to take Rory to Prom, Jess decides to leave to go to California to see his estranged father, effectively breaking up with Rory. Jess does not tell Rory he is leaving, but later calls and does not say anything on the phone, until Rory caught on that it was him and revealed that she might have loved him but would just have to get over it. Later that year, still upset, Jess returns and tells Rory that he loves her and then leaves again. After graduating Chilton as valedictorian and with a 4.2 GPA, Rory goes on to attend Yale University, her grandfather's alma mater, in season four—although her entire life she had wanted to go to Harvard—having decided that the benefits of Yale outweighed her dream of studying at Harvard. During her freshman year, Rory resides at Durfee Hall and shares a dorm room with Tana, Janet, and fellow Chilton alumna Paris Geller. She moves to Branford College, the same residential college that her grandfather, Richard Gilmore, lived in, at the beginning of her sophomore year. There she shares a dorm room with Paris. At Yale, Rory majors in English and pursues her interest in journalism; she wants to be a foreign correspondent and her role model is Christiane Amanpour. She writes for the Yale Daily News and is its editor towards the end of her studies. While at Yale, Rory reconnects with Dean, who married Lindsay (a fellow schoolmate), straight after high school, but it is soon clear that he impulsively did it as a rebound from Rory. During the same period, Jess shows up