<p>Well...I respect your concerns but have a slightly different experience. I was recently at Tufts but staying with a friend in Harvard Square. Having concerns like yours, I asked some students about the safety of walking alone to the T late at night. They told me I'd be fine (though one of them said he'd walk with me--a very nice kid, how typically Tufts). I had to laugh on the walk--the area is bustling with students in the evening, and I couldn't have felt safer. In fact, the area seemed more alive than the one on walk from the Harvard T stop to my friend's house.</p>
<p>DocT,</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It doesn't take more than 30 mins tops on the T to get to the NE Medical Centre from Davis. I don't see how your daughter could take 45 minutes unless she walks up and down the platform for 15 minutes before boarding a train.</p></li>
<li><p>That being said, when students usually say "accessible to Boston", the usual reference is to Lowes theatre/the Commons/Clubs in Boylston. Those stops are slightly closer to Tufts and take around 20 minutes traveling time. </p></li>
<li><p>Bars tend to attract drunks. In Davis and elsewhere. Fact of life, but it has never been a big issue (to my knowledge)</p></li>
<li><p>The restaurants are nothing to shout home about, but they are decent for a night out. Gargoyles is a little too pricey though.</p></li>
<li><p>Davis is well set up with eateries, bars, convenience stores and other types of establishments that cater to our needs. It's not meant as a replacement to a big city but rather a smaller, more direct place to hang out.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Tufts is not a big city university, we have BU for that. It's all about preference. We're close enough that Boston is there, but if you want to live in the heart of it, don't come to Tufts. Or live in Boston and commute to school every day. </p>
<p>And I agree that housing was not very well done this year, but I do not think that it is indicative of the university as a whole. </p>
<p>One last point, I think you may be the first person ever to complain that our cops bother to pick kids up for a safety escort. Bad things can happen, regardless if you live in Davis or somewhere in Fiji. The safety escort is a good thing, and using that as an argument to rag on Davis/location of Tufts is silly. </p>
<p>You're very well treated in America -- In Asia we don't have such systems in place. </p>
<p>Just some thoughts. And I love Tufts, I think it is the best school in the world. But that's my unbiased opinion. :P</p>
<ul>
<li>Raoul</li>
</ul>
<p>People get the escorts because it's cheaper than a taxi and they're too lazy to walk. Every campus I've heard of offers that escort service anyway. The walk to campus from Davis goes through like 2 residential blocks mostly filled up by students. Is the guy in your Chem class going to mug you for your homework?
And you can't actually expect to use your child's personal business as a reason Tufts is bad. Thank god your kid doesn't go somewhere in LA or Tufts would be, like, a community college.
Davis is a really nice place, I don't know where you get these ideas, unless your expectations for the world are way out of whack. </p>
<p>Anyway, if you hate Tufts so much and have nothing to do with it, what the hell are you doing here? Do you have some deep-seeded hatred or something that would make you want to just show up and attack it? Do you just have too much free time on your hands? What gives?</p>
<p>I also agree that if it takes your daughter 45 minutes to get to the NEMC, she's doing something wrong in her commute.</p>
<p>Davis is BUSTLING with young people. Yes there are bars for the 21+ crowd, but those appeal greatly to those with great fake IDs and juniors and seniors (i.e. half the undergraduate population of Tufts, Harvard, MIT, and other nearby schools). Davis' coffee shops are always teeming at all hours with undergrads, grads, and artsy folk. I know people who COMMUTE from downtown to go to the ever-trendy, oh-so-young Diesel Caf</p>
<p>You're forgetting it takes 10 minutes to get to the T. As far as safety, how about the rapes last year???</p>
<p>Whoops, Troll. DocT's either an adjunct faculty member at a respected LAC or a Harvard kid. Why do we fall for this....</p>
<p>DocT,</p>
<p>Like I said, bad things can happen wherever one is. Thankfully the culprit of the assaults was caught. </p>
<p>I'm happy your daughter is happy at Harvard. College choices are all about individual preferences. Given how hard students have to work to get in, stay in and then succeed after graduation, as well as how much money parents pay for the education, being happy at where one goes to school is paramount. </p>
<p>We are happy at Tufts. Certain things are not perfect, but no school is. </p>
<p>This thread began on housing concerns. I think we've moved pretty far away from the original point of this thread. Again, I'm happy you and your daughter are happy with Harvard, but please do not come here and rag on my school just for the sake of posting. Alternative views are always welcome, but as long as they are made in a mature and reasoned way. Your past few posts have not demonstrated that, and are detrimental to people trying to understand the entire picture from each posters opinions. </p>
<p>Anyway let's get back on the topic of housing shall we?</p>
<p>harrylloyd, I lived in Tilton freshman year and the bathrooms are private-lockable. Most bathrooms in the dorms are fine, though I lived in Hill for summer session and their bathrooms are really unsatisfactory. As with all things you learn to deal with it. </p>
<p>Did you get your housing assignment yet?</p>
<p>First off - there is nothing here that says that my daughter goes to Harvard. Secondly, what I've written is based on what she has experienced and from talking with students from your school - Tufts. Apparently not all students are as satisfied with their experience there as you are. I'm also sure that tons of students from MIT and Harvard head to Davis Square just like the students from Tufts heading to Harvard Square. By the way, is that guy still handing out Balance bars in the square??</p>
<p>nope not yet.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If your daughter commuted to the NEMC for work, regardless of whether or not she was doing something wrong in the commute, it's her own fault for choosing a location that involves a long commute. If it's for medical reasons, perhaps the correct specialists are at the NEMC, but if what you are suggesting is that it takes a long time to get access to medical care, that's not strictly true. My one experience with a health problem involved TEMS showing up within two minutes, and then taking me to a hospital that's less than a ten-minute drive away.</p></li>
<li><p>I had no idea people called TUPD for rides back to campus!....Wow....I'm almost jealous that I've been at Tufts for two years and not thought of that. I've come back to Davis with luggage tons of times, and reasoned that walking 7 minutes to my dorm was better than waiting a possible 20 minutes for the Joey. But this year I'm living behind Carmichael, I should TOTALLY call TUPD for rides!...lol. Anyway, I've never felt unsafe on the walk back from Davis, or TO Davis, even though I am an absolutely tiny, 99-pound 5-foot girl. But you have to understand that ANY college can be unsafe, which is why you're supposed to take precautions, like not walk around alone at night. Even when I do, however, I generally see other Tufts kids making the walk down Leonard.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>And yeah, every college is supposed to have the Blue Light and escort service. They talk about it on every tour I've been on, which I took to be mostly for the parents, assuring them that their kids will be safe. And for the record, when those assaults were happening off-campus, TUPD put signs on every door detailing them and telling us to be even more watchful, leaving descriptions of the attacker and the area he frequented, and eventually they caught the guy. During that time, some of my girl friends really DID have doubts about walking to their friends' off-campus apartments at night, and so called TUPD to pick them up from the campus center and drive over there. I think that it's awesome that TUPD exists to do things like that, making people feel safer.</p>
<p>Anyway, that stuff happened very close to campus, but not on-campus. I've walked from one corner of Tufts to the other at 3 am tons of times, and have never questioned my own safety. The campus is always really well-lit, and there are usually other kids walking around too, in varying states of intoxication, lol. Compare that to excellent schools like Penn, Yale, and Brown that are all very close to shady places. My friend's mom told us that when she was at Drexel, she was once walking alone at night through some area, past a group of boys from Drexel. She said Hi to them as she passed, and all of a sudden they got up and grabbed her. She said, "What are you doing?!" And one of the boys said, "We just wanted to make sure you'd never walk alone in this neighborhood at night again." They released her after that, but she learned her lesson. I'm going to guess that nowadays, that doesn't happen very often in New Haven and West Philly.</p>
<ol>
<li>Davis is good for certain purposes. Some great places to eat, and other useful things like pharmacies and a goodwill store where everyone gets Halloween costumes. Sometimes I'll be walking around the campus center, see the Joey about to leave, and decide "Yeah, I have forty minutes to kill, I'll just hop on and get my [blank] at Brooks." So yes, at times it can be really convenient. I'm...not really bothered by "drunks outside bars," which, to be honest, I don't think I've ever noticed. Are you talking about that guitar place across from Au Bon Pain? I tend to not really take in the bad, I guess.</li>
</ol>
<p>My daughter is there now. The streets aren't teeming with students and Tufts is putting her up at the Tufts campus in Medford because they screwed up and didn't set aside enough dorm space at the center. She had no choice as to where she stayed.</p>
<p>ok, I would like to just say a few things. I will be a freshman this fall (well, a few weeks), so I'm not going to comment on exact conditions on campus, because, well, I haven't experienced them (though, the times I've been on campus, it's seemed amazing). </p>
<p>However, I just want to point out to DocT:
a) It's summer.......besides summer classes, school isn't in session. Thus, a majority of students aren't on campus. I would think this would be an obvious reason why the streets aren't "teeming with students" right now. Give it another 3 weeks and I bet it will be completely different.
b) Please don't judge the ENTIRE university based on your daughters apparently catastrophic, world-ending problems with Tufts housing. Reslife isn't notorious for their housing assignments. Nevertheless, Reslife is absolutely no refection of Tufts academics, quality of faculty, well basically....a reflection of anything else.
c) I, personally, would like to hear what your daughter has to say about this, not what you say for her. In my experience, parents tend to utilize the "33% exaggeration rule" regarding their children. I'm sure its a maternal/paternal instinct, which is entirely understandable, but please, if you're not directly involved in the "situation", I have to say you're testimony and grievances aren't all that credible.</p>
<p>(and a small PS......by doing a small search on other posts you've made, it's not that difficult to deduce that there is some sort of connection between you and Harvard. Obviously, we are not 1005 sure your daughter will be attending there, but I feel it's a safe assumption.)</p>
<p>My daughter had more complaints than what I've listed. As a matter of fact she is completely disgusted and would never recommend the program that she was in to anybody. Not only were there issues from the standpoint of housing - (she was also moved 3 times in the same empty dorm this summer), the meal plan was all screwed up. She was promised 3 meals a day in Medford when they knew she was working in Boston. It took them two weeks to understand that she needed lunch at NEMC not in Medford. She was promised passes for the T, Tufts screwed this up and it took several weeks to clear this up. The library hours are screwed up also. Now one can say that she was involved in a special program and that these problems aren't indicative of Tufts as a whole, but talking to the Tufts students there this summer, they basically said the same things. This stuff from Tufts students is second hand so I don't know how valid it is, but the complaints are that things aren't terribly wrong with Tufts but just wrong enough to be a real pain. Things such as the library being closed at bizarre times (perhaps during midterms or finals?) Housing is an issue as I and others pointed out for upperclassmen. Surprisingly for me, lots of parents send their kids off to school without a clue about whether housing is guaranteed all 4 years. By the way this isn't just an issue with Tufts. I know a number of parents who sent their kids to school without checking these things and now the kids have transferred out of the schools.</p>
<p>well, I too have talked to many current students (in fact, one of my friends will be an upperclassman this year, and I've talked to her quite a bit), and from the people that I personally have spoken with, I have only heard great things. Sure, every school is going to have its share of problems, but I think this is to be expected. Sure things are going to be a pain, but thats just the way things are. Heck, life is a pain a lot of the time, but we deal with it, right? (not saying Tufts intentionally has problems to teach students about real life, I'm just making a comparison).</p>
<p>In respect to not guaranteeing housing for 4 years, a LOT of schools have been facing this issue, and I'm sure in the very near future, almost all schools will have the same problem. Everyone knows the applicant pool increases ridiculously every year, with the number of "top-tier" (for lack of a better word) students increasing also. With the applicant pool growing, and the school size remaining the same, it becomes (and will probably eventually be) impossible to guarantee housing for 4 years. I think this is just a reality that everyone needs to face.</p>
<p>And as a side note about parents, I do believe they should be involved in the college process, but I believe a majority of the responsibility should fall on the student. It is his or her responsibility to find out whether a school guarantees housing, what kind of meal plans it offers, etc, not the parents. College is a time to grow up and become an adult, taking on "adult" responsibility for fending for yourself. I pity people who allow their parents/have no choice but to allow their parents to control and/or dominate their lives. They will never be independent, fully functioning adults.</p>
<p>Well fortunately my daughter had all that figured out with every college she applied to - 6. She ruled Tufts out for undergraduate study based on her "feel" for the campus. Unfortunately "feel" is something that changes as someone matures. Also the way things appear to be during visits etc is often not the way they really are.</p>
<p>Well, fortunately for all concerned, most students who choose Tufts (my D is one going into her sophomore year) love it there and stay 4 years. Tufts, unlike most colleges guarantees 2 years on campus, in fact require it. Most schools give you freshman year, and put 3 kids in rooms for 3. The class of 2010 and 2011 are huge (it's the peak) and most campuses are struggling to find housing for the students. Also, fortunately, it sounds like DocT's D is going elsewhere, so the whining will stop.</p>
<p>I meant to say 3 kids in a room for 2!</p>
<p>DocT, as a parent you have my sympathy-- I don't know how old your daughter is, but think it's natural for a parent to be concerned for a child spending the summer in a city away from home. It definitely sounds like some organizational mistakes were made, but I hope her program ended up being successful in other ways.</p>
<p>There seem to be some administrative issues this summer with housing and all, but hopefully they'll be a thing of the past once the students set foot on campus in the fall. I think the freshmen are mostly anxious to find out who their roomates will be!</p>
<p>And yes, I think school choice does depend a lot on 'feel.' Our son had done a LOT of research on colleges, but something just clicked once he got to Tufts, and he knew it was where he wanted to go. A second visit just reinforced it. Obviously all schools aren't right for all students, but hopefully they'll end up in the place that's right for them.</p>