Safe (not safety) Schools

Parents Social Lounge
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<p>MOWC - Why not UMN? And yes, Vanderbilt has been on/off my list. Still not sure if it’s worth the trouble to apply to. So why Vandy?
**A few years ago a student at my school was accepted to Vandy, which shows that at least it’s possible to get accepted… (but I believed she got awesome recommendation letters and great ECs, which I don’t think I will get / have :D).</p>

<p>MImama - Rose Hulman is too small for me. I’m trying to avoid SMALL, ENGINEERING schools. I think I will feel trapped there :)</p>

<p>fallenchemist -

So is the place really like Palo Alto?</p>

<p>pizzagirl - I live in a city, so there are a lot of opportunities for public transportation. But I live in a third world country with … not so safe neighborhoods. For most students in my school, it’s really normal to not ever have to use public transportation. We carpool, or use the school bus service, or have private cars. On another note, I attended study abroad programs in metropolitan cities and I did just fine with public transportation. :)</p>

<p>jc40 - <this is=“” gonna=“” sound=“” stupid…=“”> What’s UCB? UMich was on my list but I think someone told me I would have to study for another year in college to be competitive for admissions? I don’t know if UMich will waive this “requirement” for me…</this></p>

<p>Cornell and Rice are currently my top favorites for private schools, but unfortunately they require subject tests (2 for Cornell, 1 for Rice). I don’t think I will have the time to study and take those tests by October (I’ll apply ED to Cornell :D). So, for now, excluding publics, the schools I saw you guys recommend are: Vandy, Stanford (subj tests are optional, though recommended), Northeastern, Northwestern. </p>

<p>Or do guys suggest I suck it up and take the subject tests?</p>

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<p>I would suck it up and take the subject tests. It won’t require all that much preparation (my son did none for his). I think UMN is fine, but I feel there are better choices for an international in terms of overall environment. The weather alone would be difficult.
I think Vanderbilt is a good mix of the things you are looking for (as is Rice). Nashville is a great city and there is a ton to do. You would feel safe, yet not bored or isolated. I can’t imagine you won’t have good recommendation letters.</p>

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<p>UCB=Berkeley. UMich is one of the easier publics with great reps to get into (almost 50% acceptance rate). Berkeley, UT, UVA, and UNC are hard, but not impossible, for the high achieving OOS student to get into. (D applied as an OOS to UNC and UVA and was accepted at both.) Not knowing your stats, it’s hard to guide you as to schools that would be reasonable.</p>

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<p>This student is an international applicant and will likely need financial assistance.</p>

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<p>UW- Madison is pretty safe, not completely of course, but safe if you excercise common sense. And there are lots of things going on in Madison. You should keep it on your list.</p>

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<p>I think that JHS has a nice list. I second the recommendation of Penn State. The reputation of the engineering program far exceeds the difficulty of admission, there are many kinds of engineering offered, and it is in “Happy Valley”. There is a dorm that mixes international students with students studying international relations, if you are interested in this specialized housing. If you qualify for the honors college, it is fantastic. Yes, it makes those party school lists, but there are plenty of non-drinkers there too and many of them are in engineering.
Good luck!</p>

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<p>Kaitlin, be aware of a few things:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>At many of the bigger universities, the campuses are so large that the universities often have their own bus systems that students often take to and from classes. I mention this because if you’ve never taken public transportation, it might be quite a shock to suddenly have to take it every day (as opposed to smaller universities where you can walk anywhere in just a few minutes). University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is an example of one such large university.</p></li>
<li><p>No matter how dangerous a university’s neighborhood is, people who went there will try to tell you it’s perfectly safe, as long as you don’t do something “crazy” like walk around alone or go off campus at night. In other words, they defeat their own position with the conditions they stipulate. There are enough colleges that are in truly safe areas that you don’t need to compromise on this issue. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Check out U of Colorado.</p>

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<p>^Contrary to what Schmaltz says, there are NO colleges “in truly safe areas”. That is because EVERY college is stuffed to the gills with 18-24 year-old students, who tend to pose a far greater danger to one another than any real or imagined predators in a surrounding community do. They rob, rape, abuse, vandalize, sell and use drugs, crash cars and bikes, and sometimes engage in serial murder. Some of them victimize their fellow students intentionally, most only do it unintentionally, but it’s still a huge problem.</p>

<p>What’s more, the colleges that have the safest look – the ones that are most isolated, cut off from any hostile, nonacademic community – are often the ones where students are most in danger from each other, due mainly to alcohol or drug abuse.</p>

<p>Discussions of safety here are often hidden discussions of race and class. What most people mean by “safe” is “not a lot of low-income black or Hispanic people visible in the area”.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<ol>
<li>What do you mean by safe?</li>
<li>Do you frequently walk through areas with “a lot of low-income black or Hispanic people visible in the area”?</li>
</ol>

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<p>“That is because EVERY college is stuffed to the gills with 18-24 year-old students, who tend to pose a far greater danger to one another than any real or imagined predators in a surrounding community do. They rob, rape, abuse, vandalize, sell and use drugs, crash cars and bikes, and sometimes engage in serial murder. Some of them victimize their fellow students intentionally, most only do it unintentionally, but it’s still a huge problem.”</p>

<p>Exactly. That’s why a school like the U of Chicago has a police force of about 100 uniformed officers…not to protect the students from the locals, but to protect the locals from the savage animals among the students, and to protect the students from each other.</p>

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<p>"What most people mean by “safe” is “not a lot of low-income black or Hispanic people visible in the area”. "</p>

<p>And they are wrong, because there are a lot of colleges that are in very dangerous white neighborhoods, and JHS will be glad to name them.</p>

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<p>LOL, some silly comments. The thing about students having to fear one another is just bizarre, it makes it sound like every campus is dangerous and crime ridden. While thise things do happen, the comments grossly exaggerate their frequency.</p>

<p>Anyway Kaitlin, I have been to West Lafayette 3 times, and I think I can safely say there is less to do there than in Palo Alto, lol. At least the weather in Palo Alto is usually nice. Purdue is a fine school, and being a large school there are plenty of parties, concerts, plays, sports, bars, lots of things. It just is not a city, or even close to being one. I would rather be close to San Fran and get there 3-4 times a semester than be in West Lafayette, personally. Just my preference though.</p>

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<p>I have no idea what you are talking about, Schmaltz. I don’t know which colleges are safe and which ones aren’t. Apart from places I know well, I don’t know which neighborhoods are safe and which aren’t. I know which colleges have their safety discussed constantly, and all of them are in or near low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly Black or Hispanic. You don’t get a lot of discussion of the safety of colleges in or near low-income white neighborhoods (like, say, Bates, or Binghamton).</p>

<p>As for police forces – I think most urban colleges, especially those near low-income neighborhoods, have learned that you either have a very visible police presence or your applications plummet. Necessary or not, it makes everyone feel better and safer. Unlike, say, the Penn State police force, which spends most of its time policing students, the Chicago police force seems to spend little or no time policing students.</p>

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<p>“That is because EVERY college is stuffed to the gills with 18-24 year-old students, who tend to pose a far greater danger to one another than any real or imagined predators in a surrounding community do.”</p>

<p>“I don’t know which colleges are safe and which ones aren’t. Apart from places I know well, I don’t know which neighborhoods are safe and which aren’t.”</p>

<p>Must be exhausting talking out of both sides of your mouth.</p>

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<p>“Discussions of safety here are often hidden discussions of race and class. What most people mean by “safe” is “not a lot of low-income black or Hispanic people visible in the area”.”</p>

<p>If you’re going to play the race card, don’t you think you should mention some white areas that students are cautioned to avoid after dark?</p>

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<p>guess what? most violent crimes are INTRARACIAL. so the person who would have the most to fear in a “scary” low-income black/brown community is… a black or brown person. surprise, surprise, the same is true for low-income whites. </p>

<p>so chew on that.</p>

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<p>There is crime in every state in the United States, urban and rural. Compared to many other countries, I think it is relatively safe. There is freedom, but it isn’t the Wild West. If you are careful you can live anywhere safely, it is a matter of learning how to do so. The United States is a stable country. There are many countries I would not feel safe travelling to, but anywhere in the U.S. should be relatively safe. There are nice sections of every city, and usually many dangerous sections. Rural areas look nice, but strange things happen in the less populated areas also.</p>

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<p>tractor, i agree. u basically said what i was trying to say–but with more diplomacy (lol).</p>

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<p>Schmaltz, what point are you trying to make? Are you arguing that students anywhere are more endangered by outsiders than they are by each other and themselves? Because I think that’s not true. I think the vast majority of injury and property damage on every college campus is either self-inflicted or caused by fellow students, and that injury/theft/damage by community members is a relatively small add-on no matter where you are. I also think, to some extent, there’s an inverse relationship – the more isolated, rural campuses where there is little or no danger from outsiders, involve more extreme drinking and drugs, more drunk driving, and attendant danger from that. But I can’t pretend to know that’s true in every case – I’ll bet it isn’t – and I doubt there’s any kind of fixed ratio.</p>

<p>It would be nice to have consistent statistics for this sort of thing, but we don’t. I have seen numbers that suggest there is more crime on the Stanford campus than on the University of Chicago campus, and – probably like you – I don’t believe that. But I have no real idea what the ratio of Stanford crime to Chicago crime actually is, not to mention what the ratio of Stanford injury to Chicago injury actually is. Everyone always talks about Stanford as safe and Chicago as not-safe. I know both campuses really well, and I agree that Stanford feels safe, but I also know that actual crime is not a big deal in people’s daily lives at Chicago (as opposed to fear of crime, which does affect some students, but not necessarily with any rational basis).</p>

<p>I went to college in city that felt unsafe, a city where students were always careful where they walked at night, etc. During college, one friend was murdered, and another friend was raped and left for dead, with serious permanent injuries. The murder was committed by a senior in our college, the victim’s ex-boyfriend. The rape/attempted murder happened while the victim was camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Other bad things happened to friends – violence between romantic partners, alcoholism, drug addiction, reckless behavior while drunk leading to injury. A couple people got mugged. The muggings were not an important part of the total danger we faced as students.</p>

<p>As far as I can tell, my children’s lives are not different. Some people they know have not made it out of college unscathed, and it has nothing to do with the risk of street crime on their campus. I’m not saying that street crime doesn’t exist, or that it’s not worth thinking about. I AM saying that it’s not the most important “safety” issue our kids face, and that people focus far too much on it because it’s all about how they feel, not about actual risk.</p>

<p>So what do you mean by “areas that are truly safe”? Areas like Lynchburg? Areas like Columbine? Areas like “Happy Valley”, home to my state flagship, where the alcohol-related violence and injury rates are impressive?</p>

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<p>All this discussion is academic unless we know what the OP 's stats are. I assume OP will not need FA and that she can afford any school. Can the OP get into Stanford? or Cornell? etc. Once we know the OP’s profile, then it might be easier to suggest schools.</p>