<p>JohnC613, WashU and the surrounding suburban area is actually quite safe and has relatively low crime rates. As has been explained in other threads, WashU is in a beautiful suburb of St. Louis. The city of St. Louis gets a bad rap for crime as a result of an unusual old legal definition of the city’s environs which defines the city very narrowly to the worst sections of the city. If you were to include what would be considered boroughs of the city, as most cities do, St. Louis’s crime rates would be considerably lower and way down on the list of dangerous cities.</p>
<p>I don’t want to start a long discussion of crime rates here, but simply want to clarify this for anyone considering WashU who might be concerned about this issue.</p>