<p>It seems like an amazing amount of threads here deal with a choice between Boston College and Villanova/Northwestern/Michigan State/Vanderbilt, etc. In almost every thread, BC is mentioned as being way out in the suburbs. I've tried on multiple occasions to try to clarify BC's location, but it doesn't seem to put a dent in the misconceptions. So I'm starting a whole new thread on the topic.</p>
<p>First, there is no CITY of Chestnut Hill. It's a NEIGHBORHOOD/village and a post office area that overlaps parts of Newton, Boston, and Brookline. See this:</p>
<p>Second, BC's main campus STRADDLES the Boston/Newton line. You can live in a dorm that's completely inside Boston, or in a dorm that's completely inside Newton.</p>
<p>Third, BC recently bought a large chunk of land adjacent to the BC campus that is completely inside Boston, making an even bigger proportion of the school's land actually IN Boston.</p>
<p>Fourth, there is much discussion about how long it takes to "get to Boston" from the campus. The answer is, you're either IN Boston or right next to it when you're on the main campus.</p>
<p>Don’t forget Newton campus – about 3 miles away in Newton Center, mostly freshmen live there – i believe about 40% of the freshmen population.
It takes about 1/2 hour to get into downtown Boston on the MBTA, maybe only 20 minutes if you get off in Kenmore Square (Fenway Park, etc.)</p>
<p>Don’t be so defensive. For many, BC’s location in *unincorporated<a href=“not%20that%20it%20matters”>/i</a> Chestnut Hill is a good thing. And, yes, Chestnut Hill is a suburb – perhaps a close-in suburb, but a suburb nonetheless. (Contrast Chestnut Hill to the 'hood surrounding BU a couple of miles away.)</p>
<p>I think what’s important is not political boundaries but the feel of the location. BC’s campus feels suburban–as does Brandeis and Tufts. That is a different feel from the decidedly urban feel of BU, Northeastern, Harvard and MIT. Mind you, its not better or worse necessarily, just different. Some people love suburban type campuses–others don’t.</p>
<p>OK, allow me to clarify…I went to BC and LOVE the location. I think it’s got the best best-of-both-worlds (urban/suburban) location I’ve ever seen…safe and quiet, yet the city is “right there.” </p>
<p>The thread was started as a response to the dozens of posts I’ve seen in which people try to dissuade others from going to BC because it’s WAAAYYYY OUT IN THE SUBURBS…as if it were in Framingham or Quincy.</p>
<p>I intentionally made the title of the thread overly dramatic and sarcastic, which I thought was obvious, but apparently it wasn’t. I wanted to make it eye-catching because I’ve tried to clarify BC’s unique location (straddling a big city’s boundray) on other threads, but my irrefutable comments never seemed to put an end to the BC-is-way-out-in-the-suburbs posts.</p>
<p>If anybody thinks the location is tooooo sleepy, when I was a student there, I was taking the T back to campus one day, and arrived at the BC stop just in time to see some paramedics carrying the bullet-riddled dead body of a security guard out of the bank that was in that little strip of stores just east of the T station. </p>
<p>And cowboy, that Newsweek comment was below the belt.</p>
<p>BC’s location does offer a lot. I love the buzz of the city when I was at Northeastern but it sure would have been nice to have a large grassy area to play Frisbee without walking over to the the Fens. It is also nice to get away from Huntington Ave. too. </p>
<p>The O.P. does have a point. No, BC is not a true city school. But a school right up the street from the T isn’t the 'burbs either.</p>
<p>To fully grasp the advantages that BC’s location gives it, just imagine how much more attractive other schools would be if they had a similar best-of-both-worlds location.</p>
<p>Just imagine how much more alluring Stanford would be if its campus overlapped the San Francisco city limit, rather than being waaay out in the 'burbs. Or even Northwestern if Chicago were ''right there" as opposed to a short drive away. Or if Notre Dame were adjacent to Chicago, instead of a good drive away.</p>
<p>And looking at it from the other direction, imagine if the likes of Penn, Chicago, USC, and Yale etc. maintained a close proximity to the urban excitement but also had almost zero safety issues, and didn’t require a campus police forces the size of a small army to patrol the campus and the surrounding DMZ.</p>
<p>lol, ^ Johns Hopkins has a full time police force of 58 men/women with no firearms or guns yet handles the job pretty well (ranked #1 in campus safety by Reader’s digest magazine).
Having 50+ full time police officers on staff is not the norm. Many universities have police office force ranging from 0 to 6 to 18…</p>
<p>I’ve been doing all my college visits recently and, IMO, Boston College is in the PERFECT setting. The suburb makes it pretty to look at even when you go off the campus, but it’s close proximity to Boston means you’ll never be bored, and you can get there with a quick train ride.</p>
<p>I had always thought that I would want to attend a college in the city, but most of the schools that I visited that were in the heart of cities made me nervous. They’re often unattractive when you step off campus, and I was a little nervous about crime rates. At the same time, colleges in rural areas were pretty, but seemed like they could get boring. (Obviously, I’m making pretty broad generalizations here )</p>
<p>So, I really loved the BC location. Not quite in the city, but close enough.</p>
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