My D and I looked at a college that seems like it would be a perfect fit…if we could pick it up and move it to another town! The area surrounding campus just seemed run down and not particularly safe. I am not wealthy, but I live in a fairly affluent suburban area. So, honestly, I wonder if maybe my perception is just skewed.
How important is the location / town in choosing a school if everything else (price, program, dorms, size, etc) is exactly what you are looking for in a school?
How much do you / did you “investigate” the surrounding area of campus when selecting schools? How exactly did you go about researching and gathering info?
If the surrounding area is “iffy”, is it a deal breaker?
The location is part of every school’s package. If your D is uncomfortable with it, then it is not the right school. It is a personal decision and there is no right or wrong. (this is coming from a person whose S went to school in the Bronx)
Since your daughter comes from an area where she has not had to face such situations before, I think you need to research the school’s surroundings (perhaps by starting with its forum here on CC) and discuss the situation with your daughter.
If the school is in an iffy area and she chooses to attend it, she may have to take city-type precautions even though it isn’t in a city. She may (or may not) feel that this will cramp her style. It might also be better for her to live on-campus all four years. Is that possible? Is it what she would want to do?
My son went to a college that’s close to some really bad areas, and it didn’t particularly bother him. He also didn’t have any problems except for having bicycles stolen (three times). But he’s a guy. It’s different for women. A woman might feel that she has to restrict her life too much in certain environments, and she might prefer to go to school in a place where she can feel freer.
One thing that I realized in the application process: students’ perceptions change. My daughter loved small town, liberal arts colleges as a junior and rising senior, but by the time she graduated from high school, she wanted an urban university. We were so happy that she applied to some along the way.
My kids both wanted to go to schools in urban settings. We live in the woods. They both found that the cities appeared to be less lovely than their home town. That is just the way it is.
Many urban campuses abut areas of town on one side…or are near enough…that one would wonder about their beauty.
Maybe the OP’s kid would be happier at a suburban college.
on a side note lots of schools are in bad areas many schools in philly, nyc, new haven etc…
but if they look scary to you stay away ! you need not justify yourself to anyone just move on to the next school there are like 3000 in the united states.
There is a school here in Ft.Worth, Texas that is actually a pretty good school but every day I drive by it and think “how on EARTH can any parent drop their kid off here and feel good about it?” It is surrounded by a decaying area that is very high in crime, etc.
I don’t have any big advice, but I will say being able to walk around campus safely and having restaurants, coffee shops and stores is important to the overall college experience and absolutely necessary to your sanity as a parent.
My kid went to school in a run down & gritty mill town and truthfully, none of the kids there seemed to mind at all.
35 years before when my parents took my sister to see this school she wouldn’t even get out of the car and told them to keep driving. So, it depends, imo, how the kid feels about going to school in a particular town.
There are a lot of great schools in not so great parts of cities/towns. 1000’s and 1000’s of kids go to school in these places every year.
It’s really not necessary to my sanity that my kids have access to restaurants and coffee shops. They might both say it’s necessary to their sanity, however.
Consider the following list of the 50 most dangerous colleges: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/14/50-most-dangerous-colleges.html
Is the target school on the list?
Even at the worst of them, the odds of being the victim of a violent crime are rather low
(single digits per thousand students per year, apparently).
The 50 include Stanford, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Princeton, and Northwestern … which are not exactly located in depressed urban areas. I suspect the greatest risks on nearly any campus (especially to a young woman) come from other students, or from one’s own risky behaviors (including substance abuse). At my son’s urban(-ish) college, the college president noted at a commencement address the number of students who had died during his tenure. Every death had been alcohol-related.
I think it’s to each his own on this one - as previously mentioned, many top schools are located in urban areas with iffy surroundings - Yale doesn’t seem to have a problem attracting applicants, and that neighborhood is among the worst you’ll see. Many not-so-top schools are in such locales as well, especially in the Northeast, where many old colleges were built when now-crumbling industrial towns were the places to be. It doesn’t seem to affect the number of applications, but if it’s something you are really worried about, then move on. However, I will say that many of these locations have security in place to protect all but the stupidest kids (the ones who walk home alone at 2 am).
As someone who attended two schools with questionable surroundings, and who is bringing his oldest son to start one next week, I would say that it’s all about being smart and careful and you should be fine. Unfortunately, at many schools your daughter will statistically face a greater chance of being a victim of date rape than a crime from the surrounding city.
Half the schools on this list are Ivy League or Ivy equivalents. The data is old too, it includes the Virginia Tech massacre which was in 2008 I believe.
D’s college sits on top of a mountain and is surrounded by 13,000 acres of trees, but we still required her to take a self-defense course before leaving for campus. Situations can occur anywhere. In addition to learning and practicing defensive maneuvers, she also was taught how to scan her environment, get in and out of a car properly, etc. These skills have utility beyond college.
At every school anyone’s daughter will face a greater chance of date rape than of crime related to the neighborhood. Multiples greater. She’ll also face greater risks from her peers’ alcohol or drug use (and her own as well), and from petty theft at the hands of fellow students.
Anyway, 18-year-old human beings are really adaptable, and one of the things most of them can do easily is adapt to living in a somewhat sketchy urban environment even though they grew up in an affluent suburb or on a farm. There’s no law that says they have to do that, and if they really don’t want to try, fine. But it would be a real mistake to assume that, just because your daughter has never lived anywhere like that before, it will take her more than a couple weeks to adjust to her new environment (and to feel proud of herself for that).
"How important is the location / town in choosing a school if everything else "
-For some it is important and for others it is not so. There is no general rule here. For my kid, location was a criteria #1, not only for college, but also for Med. School. For many others, location is irrelevant.
"18-year-old human beings are really adaptable, and one of the things most of them can do easily is adapt to living in a somewhat sketchy urban environment "
There is no reason to adapt if one has choices and can choose the place that fits perfectly with the absolute minimum adapting. While sometime it is not possible, I do not see how it is not possible in regard to college. College should be more of a “fit” than Grad. School or other later career choices. Kids are more vulnerable and more attached to families, they tend to transfer if college does not fit. I would not focus on the fact that they adapt, I much rather focus on the right fit so that “adaptation” is minimum (which still will take place no matter how good the fit is).
@MiamiDAP this is talking about neighborhoods, possible safety issues, and the run down look of some colleges. Those are less easy to,“adapt to” if they are really huge issues.
Your daughter’s undergrad was in a safe, small college town. Her med school is part of a university that folks sometimes walk away from because it is located in an area that is not so wonderful…the surroundings have improved, for sure…but it’s hardly a place where folks would recommend walking around off campus at night.
When I talked to my husband (who had not been with us) about my opinion of the area, his initial response was “Well then, forget it. We’re not sending her someplace that isn’t safe.” So then we started talking about the schools that we haven’t been able to visit and that we probably won’t get to visit before applying. How many of those were we going to feel the same way about? Is it really unsafe or just my perception?
Her intended major is very limiting as far as college options. Her “A” list (so to speak) of schools she wants to apply to includes 6 colleges. We have visited 3. Her “B” list includes 2 colleges and we plan on visiting 1. I expect she will not be admitted to all 8 colleges, so the list becomes smaller. Then, maybe a couple of schools don’t offer enough $ to make them affordable. Now, maybe we’re down to 1-3 schools. We don’t know which schools it will come down to. So, I guess I am just trying to decide if the area would still be a deal breaker or not. If it its, maybe I just shouldn’t even have her apply. My initial thought was for her to apply and maybe go back again (they offered to let her sit in on classes and meet with some more department heads, tour some of the facilities that we just walked by on the tour, etc.) to see how it feels when campus is full. On the other hand, if she does all that and ends up really liking it there, but I decide I just won’t be comfortable sending her…well…that will probably be unpleasant! lol
Be sure to look up the crime stats for both the city/neighborhood/town and the university itself. I am going to school in a relatively high crime city but crime on campus is virtually nonexistent. We also get email alerts every time something DOES happen on campus reminding us of safety precautions and such.
The most important thing is that everyone feels comfortable, so if you feel at all uncomfortable with your child living there, don’t let her apply. It is much harder to hear no after you’ve been accepted.