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seseamom, your comment is far more presumptuous than my statement. We saw apparently homeless or jobless street people hanging out that were white, black, and brown and probably every possible shade, the one sleeping under the tree by our car happened to be white… …anything else you want to know?</p>
<p>Momofthreeboys- Some posters don’t know how to do anything but filter things through their own narrow lens. Appreciate the info on Trinity.</p>
<p>DS had a similar reaction to Trinity as momofthreeboys’. Didn’t like the architecture and didn’t feel like he’d want to hang out in the areas around the college. Funny, it was the exact same reaction I’d had 30 years earlier. I had friends who attended Trinity and liked it but I didn’t apply and neither will DS.</p>
<p>“Very poor” means exactly what it says. “Homeless” and “jobless” mean pretty much what they say. "Inner city has a certain connotation. “Very ethnic” means something else again, and in some cases would NOT be a negative, unless diversity (i.e. a mixed ethnic area) is a downside. </p>
<p>Most times that I hear “ethnic” as a negative it means “non-white”. And yes, Momofwildchild, it IS my reality, and my lens. I happen to LIVE in a large city in a “very ethnic” area where some people won’t go. <em>I</em> live, work, shop and take my kid to activities there without issue, but I can absolutely see a midwesterner from a homogenous town or even, as I’ve experienced first-hand, some parts of Seattle, view it as “very ethnic” in a bad way. That’s why I asked.</p>
<p>I’m not saying Trinity is in a nice area, a safe one, or that you’re wrong. But “very ethnic” isn’t a blanket negative to a pretty large population.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is AA and a police officer and works near Yale, his daughter was asking about Trinity and he said No, look elsewhere. I know at the time there was an incident on campus, a horrible beating of a student, but it wasn’t just that, he thought the neighborhood was much worse than other urban ones he has worked in or lived in.
Just one opinion though, I’m sure many students thrive there, I just thought it was notable at the time. He also said (this was 4-5 years ago) they heard of more racial incidents on campus, maybe in part because of the neighborhood, but in studies of local colleges, they had more.</p>
<p>sseamom - I had the ‘exact’ same reaction that you did when I read the words ‘very ethnic.’ I have a feeling the poster meant it in a negative way, but since I can’t believe that diversity could be a ‘bad’ thing to anyone, I will give her the benefit of the doubt. </p>
<p>momofthreeboys- I have to admit your sentence struck me like a lightning bolt. What did you mean when you typed “very poor and very ethnic?”</p>
<p>laurendog, et al. - </p>
<p>Could we PLEASE move on? If you were offended, take it up with the poster privately - that’s what PM’s are for. This thread is about the various reasons that one school or another gets crossed off a family’s “to apply” list.</p>
<p>If someone’s reason for saying “no way” to a school offends you, then please feel free to put that CC’er on your “ignore” list.</p>
<p>Confidential College is in a neighborhood that is very poor, very inner city and very white. There did not appear to be any safe areas around the campus. Hmmmm, now how does that sound?</p>
<p>dodgersmom, if what i say offends you, please place me on your ignore list. Oh, and I don’t need a pm.</p>
<p>Let it go guys. You are reading out of context and fishing for something that simply isn’t there…if it makes you feel better read “ethnically diverse” when you see “very ethnic.” It is very simply the ‘flavor’ of the Trinity neighborhood. I won’t be goaded and I think you are being alittle paranoid. If you have a legitimate guestion ask away in the Trinity forum or better yet, if you are considering Trinity, go visit and form your own opinions.</p>
<p>It’s good to get multiple perspectives on these matters. I had heard (on CC) that School X was in a “not so great” neighborhood, but when we visited foiund that it was, to my eye, merely “urban gritty.” </p>
<p>Of course, I live in a town that was always preceded by a small cough when my kids were in elementary school, as in "he’s from <em>ahem</em> town-x. Our town has some really nice areas and some middle-of-the-road areas and some really nasty areas.</p>
<p>Cleary Act crime data is available for every college campus in the US. It now is summarized on the US Dept. of Education’s College Navigator site for each college, which also has much other useful recent data. However, that data does not include crime near the campus.</p>
<p>For larger cities, you often can find an online map of homicides. That can give you a sense of the safety of various parts of the city.</p>
<p>Many areas feel safe during the day, but become dangerous late at night. A large amount of violent street crime occurs after midnight.</p>
<p>Colleges will purposefully choose the most buccolic way to enter the campus in their directions and will try to avoid views of blighted areas during tours. Spend some extra time and walk around the neighborhood on your own, after the tour.</p>
<p>We have a neighborhood in our town that I would describe as very ethnic. It’s currently very Mexican. It used to be very Italian. And before that it was very German. </p>
<p>I too have occasionally been quite amused by what some CCer’s find scarily urban. I have not visited Hartford, so I have no idea how it would strike me. I went to Columbia in the middle of the crack epidemic, so most places look pretty good to me!</p>
<p>Just as an aside on Trinity - the area is urban gritty and does not have the type of restaurants, stores and bars that attract the college crowd. So social life at Trinity is very focused on what happens on campus. It actually is not that different from colleges like Williams or Kenyon where the town is safe but so tiny it is really just an extension of campus. Social life is focused on campus.</p>
<p>Trinity does have many opportunities for students to get out in the city - whether it is working downtown in state government, tutoring inner city youth, or doing research at one of the major hospitals in town. But if you are looking for a cute safe college town where students mix with the locals on Saturday night look at Amherst or Wellesley.</p>
<p>Glee - Yes. That is exactly what I felt. People would think it strange if someone typed “I didn’t feel safe, the area was lily white.” So why should we not respond if someone writes the opposite? </p>
<p>And as far as people telling me to ‘drop things,’ I do not believe that people should use this forum as a place to just type anything at all without being questioned by the people whom read them. If I gave a review of University X and typed in here “I didn’t really like it. Everyone in the surrounding community was very rich and white,” I would expect multiple CC members to come on and say “what in the world did you mean by that?” And, I suspect few of them would PM me! Commentary on one’s posts comes along with posting on a message board. </p>
<p>I find the advice to “just hit ‘ignore’” on anyone I disagree with, fairly sad. So I should never comment on anything, and I should build a community of people that consists of only those I agree with? That sounds pathetic.</p>
<p>I thought this thread was for sharing one’s opinions about schools. Not for attacking those who posted their opinions about schools, regardless of the terminology or phrasiology they used. IMO, if someone doesn’t like what another poster wrote about a school or its environs, read something else. This is a thread for posters opinions about schools. Not about posters opinions of the school reports made by other posters.</p>
<p>If someone feels uncomfortable in the area around their school for whatever reason, thats how they felt. Its not right or wrong, its how they felt. Really folks.</p>
<p>Shrug, I’ve heard people make comments about not liking schools due to their being “too white.”</p>
<p>To each their own. I find it amazing how quickly people get offended and think others should conform to their standards with beliefs and/or wording. </p>
<p>FTR, I prefer people write what they feel and I’ll filter according to my desires. (Didn’t want anyone thinking that everyone wanted pre-filtered reports - obviously some do, but not all of us.)</p>
<p>Some students will like “very ethnic” campuses, others will not. Criticisms of “rich, preppy (aka white)” campuses are quite common. I once noted that UCBerkeley, which has the highest number of Pell grant recipients in the country, has a lot of poor kids. Some people got worked up over that.</p>
<p>We didn’t like Trinity either for the same reasons. It quickly came off our list.</p>
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<p>OTOH, there are already over forty references to Trinity over the space of the last three years; 80 posts that mention Columbia. I know this is asking a lot for a thread that is three thousand+ posts long, but is it possible to just posit that both schools are in relatively dense urban areas (however that may strike different people) and leave it at that?</p>
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<p>I don’t think describing colleges that way provides any useful information. USC and UCLA are both located in “relatively dense urban areas,” as are Harvard and Yale. I don’t think most visitors would find the environments of the pairs similar.</p>