<p>is it a nice town? i mean.. i'm not from philly but i've researched around the web and it says that philly has the highest crime rate in the US.</p>
<p>as a penn student, do you feel secure everytime you go for a walk?</p>
<p>I feel totally safe, as long as I'm wearing my bullet proof vest and carrying pepper spray and an uzi.</p>
<p>jk...there's no problem on the campus and surrounding area, as long as you keep your wits about you. Students also go to Center City and Olde Town with very few issues. Some areas of North & West Philly are pretty bad, but no reason to go there.</p>
<p>On campus is not an issue at all; at night, there are Penn security guards on bikes and on foot literally on every street corner, wearing florescent yellow shirts. They also cover the area immediately off campus.</p>
<p>Otherwise, just be smart about where you're going. Travel in groups at night, don't flash your money/iPod/jewelry, etc.</p>
<p>Where on the web does it say that Philadelphia has the highest crime rate in the U.S.?</p>
<p>It has a crime rate somewhat higher than some other large cities, and lower that different ones. It may have the highest crime rate among the 10 largest cities (but not by much I suspect). If you expand it to 20 or 25 cities, no way would Philadelphia be first.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, crime is not evenly distributed throughout the (fairly large) city. As noted, there are areas of the city that DO have horrible crime rates, and they don't include University City, Center City, or anywhere else Penn students generally hang.</p>
<p>EDIT: I just took a quick look. Based on 2006 numbers, Philadelphia was 9th in murder rate, behind (among others) Washington DC and Detroit. In overall violent crime, which was not ranked, its rate was lower than (among others) Dallas, Cinncinnatti, St. Louis, Memphis, Kansas City, Atlanta (and Detroit and Washington).</p>
<p>Penn has about 20,000 students at any time. Every few years, one of them (seldom an undergraduate) gets murdered -- sometimes in a random attack, more often by someone who knows the victim. I can't remember it ever happening on campus, but it's always big, big news if it happens. The murder rate for Penn students is way low.</p>
<p>It is more often people from Penn doing the killing than the other way around...</p>
<p>people get killed </p>
<p>/thread</p>
<p>no but really i did a summer program there and was eating outside of Cosi. a homeless guy came up to me and bummed me for benjamins!!!! (tr00 story) but its a good school so thats what counts.</p>
<p>Some of these statements are TOTALLY false, or don't reflect the truth at all.</p>
<p>It's not the case that someone "gets murdered" every few years. Every few years a student dies, but that's due to illness or accidents most of the time (meningitis last year, a car accident at the beginning of this year). Several years ago a girl got hit by a stray bullet, but that was totally random. She survived, as it only hit her in the leg. </p>
<p>It's also not true that Penn students are more often doing the killing.... the murder rate in Philadelphia goes hand in hand with neighborhoods of violence and poverty. A few years ago a girl (irina malinovskaya) killed her ex-boyfriend's new flame and managed to stay in the DP every week due to a three-ring circus of retrials that makes OJ simpson look tame. However, her boyfriend and the new gal weren't penn students, and all 3 were part of a group of russian immigrants that had a difficult social circle.</p>
<p>quaker10 is right. Campus is safe, and center city is safe, and so is fairmount park, and king of prussia, and south philly (those are the places students want to go, anyway). Parts of Philadelphia are more dangerous, but students don't tend to go there. Many more parts of Philadelphia are great, and students don't go there either.</p>
<p>I can't recally ANY serious attacks on students. A few years ago a guy ran around trying to mug people with a screwdriver, and there were some cases of large groups of teenagers harassing some people over the summer, but these are isolated incidents. Ridiculous stories make the news (like the torture victim at Columbia this summer), but the absolute truth is that Penn is really a safe place. Theft is sometimes a problem - but that's true everywhere. You don't leave a bike unlocked, and you don't leave a laptop unattended.</p>
<p>There are many more questions to ask about Philly than just crime...</p>
<p>If you go to an urban university, you are going to get panhandled sometimes. That's just a fact of life. You are also going to know people whose bikes were stolen.</p>
<p>It's fine if you want to go to Princeton, Stanford, Dartmouth, or Cornell (or Williams, or Middlebury) because they feel more comfortable than Penn. Penn will probably survive. If you look at most of the rest of Penn's competition -- Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Chicago, Hopkins, Duke, Tufts, Northwestern, Georgetown, Berkeley . . . -- there really isn't enough difference one way or the other to make a difference. They all have some urban crime issues, but serious problems are rare, and they all do a lot to promote security. You are much more in danger from other students than you are from people outside the university community.</p>
<p>mattwonder: A couple years ago, a medical student was killed in Center City by a psychotic former classmate who was stalking her. Five or six years ago a senior was killed by someone who broke into her apartment in Center City, and maybe 12 years ago a grad student was killed in a mugging in Clark Park, about a mile from campus. That was the basis of my statement. They were (a) serious, fatal attacks on students, and (b) very rare, given the number of students there are.</p>
<p>I just got back from Philadelphia. The headlines on the 10 o'clock news Sunday night were that a 41 year old man driving on the Schuylkill Expressway (goes by Penn) in S. Philly was shot while driving. (not near Penn) and that a woman was raped outside the Eagles game.
Lovely.
Yes, it can happen anywhere. Just saying....</p>
<p>Stats aside, Philly "looks" dirtier, poorer, and more run-down than other major cities. This could make someone feel insecure even in Center City when it is actually safe. Only 17% of the population aged 25+ have college degree, the lowest among major cities (e.g. 34% for Atlanta). Perhaps the litter problem has something to do with the education level of the general population. I am not sure.</p>
<p>Philadelphia is two cities, really. There are the Brooklyn/Bronx parts that are northeast Philly and West-West Philly, and there is the Manhattan part that stretches from Old City, through Center City, into University City...difference is that Philly's Manhattan doesn't have the good fortune to be on its own island (I for one have been all in favor of flooding the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to turn it into a moat).</p>
<p>Philly's government also doesn't have the massive tax base of global financial firms making billions in profits--oh wait, now New York doesn't either. This should be fun.</p>