Emma Watson Plans U.S. College – Minus Scary Spring Break

The Harry Potter star and "nerd" can't wait to hit the books, not the beach

It’s no secret Emma Watson – a.k.a. Hermione Granger in Harry Potter’s world – wants a degree from an American college, preferably an Ivy League school like Brown. At U.S. universities “you’re encouraged to be broad and choose many different subjects,” the U.K.-bred actress tells this month’s Interview magazine.

But there’s a American-college ritual that the star, 19, currently at work on the seventh and eighth installments of Harry Potter, plans to skip: a crazy spring break on a sunny beach.

“I felt like I had walked into an American teen movie,” says Watson of a recent trip to coeds-gone-wild mecca Cancun. “I was only there for two days – thankfully my friends and I were more interested in traveling around other parts of the country. But that was the weirdest place ever.”

Watson says she will miss Potter pals Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint (he plays Ron Weasley) once filming ends in time for college later this year, but she admits that, after 10 years of working together, they don’t spend a lot of time together off the set.

“We see so much of each other when we’re working that hanging out together would be overload,” says Watson, who with a pal shares a duplex apartment in London, where she just hosted her first-ever dinner party, and drives a Toyota Prius. “They’re like my siblings now.”