<p>i read a news article on the northwestern website, these robberies are really scaring me from applying.....</p>
<p>anyone have any insight as to this....seems as if the northwestern area is quite dangerous</p>
<p>i looked at the northwestern website sometime in february and another robbery alert was on the website....</p>
<p>I've been a life-long resident of either the North shore or the North side of Chicago and I'm an incoming freshman who goes to campus every weekday for classes and research. The campus is rather safe IMO. Evanston itself is pretty safe; common sense will get you through 4 years there just fine in most cases. </p>
<p>And let's compare NU's surroundings to those of other top schools. Columbia, UPenn, Hopkins, Yale and UChicago all are in some rather rough neighborhoods from what I'm told (often by current students there). Wash U in St. Louis is in an ok part of town, but the rest of St. Louis is a mess. NU is in a fairly safe suburb which does have an incident every so often; it's an important concern to have, but in all honesty, it shouldn't turn you off from applying if you want to apply. NU isn't that dangerous.</p>
<p>Northwestern really is not dangerous. There were a couple of incidents this past year, but I don't think that it makes the school dangerous. A couple of people were mugged, but they caught the people who did it. A girl was raped, but she was walking alone at night off campus. I'm not saying that she deserved to get raped (nobody does), but you just don't walk alone at night, especially off campus where it's not as well lit as say, Sheridan (a main road). I think that a lot of times Northwestern gets targeted because it's a high concentration of students and we're easy targets. I think you can find that at pretty much any college. If you use common sense, nothing's going to happen to you.</p>
<p>The main places on campus are all well-lit at night and safe. Students are walking along Sheridan at all hours of the evening and even Sherman ave is fine late at night, what with the BK hopping 24 hours a day and many other places open until 1am-ish. The incidents that occurred happened generally after 2am, when students were walking alone, and in Evanston, not on campus. </p>
<p>Any town with unlit streets is unsafe to walk around alone and late at night. I have never had anything close to a problem on campus; the scarier areas are the shady ones as you go North off campus, and by the El stops. If you travel in groups and don't go to known unlit areas alone at night, I can't imagine anything happening to you. And I don't think this makes Northwestern particularly unsafe.</p>
<p>magnetschoolCA,</p>
<p>Stuff like that isn't rare in the vicinity of most schools. But many schools don't post the alert/warning like NU does on its website. This probably gave you the impression that Evanston is dangerous. But Evanston is actually pretty nice.</p>
<p>"But many schools don't post the alert/warning like NU does on its website."</p>
<ul>
<li>I've been a huge opponent of this for years. It annoys me even more when the school does it during application season! </li>
</ul>
<p>The area is safe enough, but if you go walking around dark, poorly lit Evanston at night, you're asking for trouble. Northwestern students make easy targets for crime.</p>
<p>It's not a good idea to walk around ANYWHERE in dark, poorly lit areas at night.</p>
<p>True... I'm just highlighting the fact that most of the area around Northwestern is hilariously under-lit. I've never seen a place with so few street lights (granted, I am from a large city). In fact, the lights on Sheridan didn't even appear until like 4 years ago....</p>
<p>the north shore, where northwestern is located, is one of the most affluent areas in the world. wilmette, the town just north of evanston, has a median family income of $122,515, and median values don't even account for outliers (which in this case are much more on the high end).</p>
<p>evanston is an extremely nice town in the east (where northwestern is) and gets pretty shady when you start going west, it's very divided demographically in that way.</p>
<p>any campus in an urban-ish area is going to have some incidents of mugging, etc. this may sound like a shock to you but getting mugged isn't the worst thing in the world, i have a lot of friends at depaul (in chicago) who know someone who has been mugged or have been mugged themselves.</p>
<p>also, i promise you, nothing like this happens at northwestern:
<a href="http://maroon.uchicago.edu/news/articles/2005/09/30/spate_of_shootings_s.php%5B/url%5D">http://maroon.uchicago.edu/news/articles/2005/09/30/spate_of_shootings_s.php</a>
<a href="http://maroon.uchicago.edu//articles/2005/10/07/crime_report_october.php%5B/url%5D">http://maroon.uchicago.edu//articles/2005/10/07/crime_report_october.php</a></p>
<p><a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Echevrier/hpaction/10june05%5B/url%5D">http://home.uchicago.edu/~chevrier/hpaction/10june05</a>
<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Echevrier/hpaction/23june05%5B/url%5D">http://home.uchicago.edu/~chevrier/hpaction/23june05</a>
<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Echevrier/hpaction/20june05%5B/url%5D">http://home.uchicago.edu/~chevrier/hpaction/20june05</a>
<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Echevrier/hpaction/18april05%5B/url%5D">http://home.uchicago.edu/~chevrier/hpaction/18april05</a>
<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Echevrier/hpaction/05october05%5B/url%5D">http://home.uchicago.edu/~chevrier/hpaction/05october05</a>
<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Echevrier/hpaction/04april05%5B/url%5D">http://home.uchicago.edu/~chevrier/hpaction/04april05</a>
<a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Echevrier/hpaction/28july05%5B/url%5D">http://home.uchicago.edu/~chevrier/hpaction/28july05</a></p>
<p>as far as top schools go, northwestern is in one of the better locations for safety</p>
<p>The western part of Evanston is poorer but the eastern part, where NU campus and downtown is, looks very upper-middle class. I think part of the problem is Evanston looks too nice and safe that some students stop using common sense (such as walking alone late at night in poorly lit area and assuming nothing is gonna happen). I actually think many offenders may not be from Evanston. A poorer (though not as poor as those in the South Side of Chicago) neighborhood called Rogers Park (part of Chicago) is only 15 min train-ride away; an affluent community in the neighboring north with a private university is enough of a reason for any felon to head north and commit robberies.</p>
<p>It really is very safe, with isolated incidents. With that said, someone did try to break into my apartment two weekends ago, when I was home by myself. My apt. is also located in a generally busy area downtown (so not gaffield, garnett, etc), and it wasn't that late, so I figure it was just probably some messed up kids being stupid. Stuff like that happens EVERYWHERE and you can't really let it get to you.</p>
<p>Just be smart, use your common sense, I never walk anywhere by myself when it's dark out. People are always more than willing to walk you back to your apt or dorm or whatever.</p>
<p>I agree with what Sam Lee said. But yeah...I'd be more worried about being in the Hyde Park area in the wee hours of the morning than being in Evanston. </p>
<p>Common sense is key! :)</p>
<p>If you think that Rogers Park is 'poor' ...</p>
<p>Hyde Park and South Chicago is scary as hell at night. Especially around Midway airport and the projects. </p>
<p>Evanston has one bad area towards the southeast, but it's only makes up like 5 or 6 blocks. Evanston is a great town and like everyone says, if you just use common sense, everything will be fine. All those emergency telephones with the blue light around the campus makes you feel safe. I hope to go to Northwestern since I live so close to there.</p>