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I’d second the comment that leaving it that they in are in dense urban environment is not very helpful. Between living in Boston and visiting schools with my two oldest I’ve been to most of the very good or better urban schools in the mid-atlantic and the northeast and the my comfort level about the safety and the appeal of the immediate neighborhood varied greatly between schools.</p>
<p>Ethnically diverse is code for not white.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. The Italian Jersey Shore crowd might be described as “ethnic,” as might middle-easterners in traditional Muslim attire, and even Orthodox Jews. All of them are technically “white,” but the way they dress or activities they regularly engage in may be associated with a specific ethnicity.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. And so what if it is? It seems that the PC thing on CC is to feel comfortable sending our kids into marginal environments. I had this fight about Penn several years ago (my son was a student there). There are many schools that are NOT in desirable areas- whether that means too much crime, too low of income levels, too “diverse” or whatever someone might want to call it. We may all want to pretend that we are enlightened and that “if you are careful and use common sense you will be fine”, but that simply isn’t the case. Wake up. And another thing- not everyone WANTS diversity.</p>
<p>There are many neighborhoods that are ethnicly and racially diverse that are reasonably safe. There are other neighborhoods where street violence is a daily occurance. </p>
<p>I live in a diverse City neighborhood that is reasonably safe as long as you are not a drug dealer, a gang member, or within an abusive relationship. No one has bothered me. But there are people getting killed every month.</p>
<p>Statistically, if you look at the most prone crime-prone geographic areas, they are often around large suburban shopping malls.</p>
<p>Remember the thread several years back, MOWC, where someone said Rice was “inner city” and it set off a firestorm of comments? Bottom line, if a school is in an area that is/feels unsafe for whatever reason, I think its ok to share that feeling or concern. There will always be those whose hackles get raised because they think its a code word for “not white”, but thats their perspective. And as others have said, many posters have said they’ve gone running from schools that seemed too lily white or cookie cutter. Thats ok too, IMO. Again, it is their opinion, and they are entitled to it. </p>
<p>And to whoever suggested posters be expected to go back and read 3500+ posts over the past 3 years to see aht these comments have been said before, whell, good luck with that one. And fwiw, that could probably be said about many, if not the majority of posts on cc over the years.</p>
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<p>That might be true, but how many are located in lily-white neighborhoods?</p>
<p>Can I suggest we stop the inflammatory, incitful posts and get back to talking about the thread topic?</p>
<p>We interrept the incredibly sheltered lives of the vast majority of the posters here to now return to the regularly scheduled topic.</p>
<p>Speaking of which, here’s a sample of some of the most popular colleges in the country sorted according to the number of times they’ve been mentioned in this thread:</p>
<p>Penn- 102
Brown - 143*
Williams - 100
Cornell - 95
Amherst - 92
Harvard - 89
Princeton - 89
UVA - 89
Yale - 82
Columbia - 81
Dartmouth - 71
Wesleyan - 70
NYU - 67
Duke - 61
Swarthmmore - 47
Trinity - 41
Bowdoin - 38
Middlebury - 36
Haverford - 34
Oberlin - 29
Pomona - 27
Emory - 25
Rice - 24
Occidental - 21
Colby - 20
Bates - 19
Reed - 19
Grinnell - 18
WUSTL - 12</p>
<p>What’s interesting is when you look at it from a <em>per capita</em> viewpoint, just how “poorly” the LACs fair, that is, unless you look at the number of posts as a function of that school’s popularity (the more visits - the more cranky observations.) In any event, it’s an interesting three-year tally; feel free to add more.</p>
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<li>Word “brown” also conjures up the color - but not as often as you might think.</li>
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<p>Wow, Johnwesley. You must have a lot of free time on your hands :)</p>
<p>If you like numbers, here’s a list of who has posted in this thread, and how often:
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<p>Looks like some folks have some catching up to do :)</p>
<p>Deleted…</p>
<p>My oldest son said no to Northern Michigan because it was too far to drive (5 hours) and ended up and graduated from a college that was an 18 hour drive. My middle son said no to NAU because there was nowhere to put the bikes in the winter and kids left them outside in the bike racks. I spent time in Hyde Park in the 70s when alot of kids and parents said “no”. I believe Mellow Yellow is still there. I said no to University of Michigan because I thought it was to much of a machine. Are we back on track yet? My 12th post on this thread.</p>
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Thre seem to be somewhere close to 300 posters here. You know this about the “vast majority of posters” how???</p>
<p>@ GolfFather… in the words of my 16yo daughter… DUHHHH!!! LOL I know New Haven has a reputation. I have lived here all my life and see it first hand… the point I am trying to make, as I tried to make in my last post is that Hartford has little to offer/has no redeeming qualities. I wasn’t able to open the link for whatever reason but I am sure it had some disparaging remarks about the city. My question is, if its so bad… why do the students continue to come? I would never in a million years send my child to a city where the reputation was so bad. </p>
<p>2 cases of murdered Yale students–</p>
<p>1) About 15 years ago, a student was stabbed to death on the corner of St Ronan street and Canner Street I believe. That neighborhood is in the HEART of Yale and one of the most expensive streets in New Haven. I am sure the homes are 1-2 million dollars or maybe more. 2 of the finest private schools are also in that area. The Foote School and St Thomas. It was suspected that the person who slit her jugular was her college professor. Who lived on that same street. She had sent an email to a classmate earlier that Friday evening to say that she was meeting the prof to drop a paper off. The cops were never able to gather enough evidence to pin the murder on him. He made a precipitous move back to his native country. The case remains unsolved.</p>
<p>2) Two years ago, a Yale grad student went missing while she worked in a Yale research lab. Of course it was assumed that one of New Havens homegrown who had taken her. A week later, her naked, beaten/bruised body was found stuffed in the wall of her research lab. What added to the horror was that her body was found on the day that she was to marry her fiance. The perpetrator? Her colleague who was white/lived in the suburbs.</p>
<p>I think when you throw around words like “ethnic” and the like, it stings because danger comes in every shade of the rainbow!!! And you do yourselves and more importantly YOUR CHILDREN a disservice to assume that white/rich/suburban is safe. </p>
<p>Another sad story, this one is about a suburb not too far from New Haven. Probably a fascimile of where most posters on CC live.</p>
<p>There was a terrible home invasion in July of 2007. In Chesire, CT A home was broken into in the middle of the night. The father was beat about the head with a bat and tied up in the basement. The intruders then went upstairs to unleash horror on the 3 female inhabitants. The wife, and daughters(11yo and 18yo who was set to enter an ivy league school) were raped, sodomized in every way possible, tied up, and beaten for hours. They then took the wife to her bank to withdraw a very large sum of cash. On the way back from the bank, the intruder bought gasoline. The wife was then tied back up and the house was doused with gasoline. The father made it out. His beautiful wife and daughters did not. The oldest daughter was able to free herself from her bindings and attempted to save her baby sister. She was unsuccessful. She was burned alive. It later came out that one of the perpetrators had spotted the wife/youngest daughter in a lcoal grocery store, followed them home and then returned that night to have their way with the unsuspecting family. None of the players in the disgusting, tragic, heart breaking case were ethnic/poor(the father is a cardiologist or surgeon I believe), they lived in a very white, very “safe”, very expensive suburb and both intruders were white.</p>
<p>I say all this to say… I feel much safer in my own neighborhood than in a so called “safe” place… no place is safe. Period. So stop assuming that anything white/rich/suburban is safe!!!</p>
<p>I remember the latter two of those incidents. Horrifying. And I agree with you. Make no assumptions about safe/not safe for your kids. Case in point, along with the above-- Lauren Spierer, Indiana University, 2011. Affluent white kid probably done in (or hidden after accidental death) by her friends, affluent white kids.</p>
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I’ve read quite a bit about the tragic murder of Suzanne Jovin, and although this post will take the thread even further OT, the prof who was initially accused is currently an anti-terrorism consultant in Washington, DC. I don’t know what native country he “precipitously” moved back to, but he grew up in Connecticut, and has been working in DC for the last 6 years or so. No credible evidence against him was ever produced. A witness saw a man who she stated was NOT the professor run past her in the area where Suzanne was discovered. The police sat on a DNA sample for several years which was later found to be corrupted. The professor, James Van de Velde, was a convenient target for the police and I would not at all agree with the implication that he was the probable murderer.</p>
<p>Schools crossed off the list, none because we didn’t visit any.</p>
<p>I just wanted to join the list here created by jym626 and post here. :)</p>
<p>Hey, I have 4 posts on this thread… oops, that’s incorrect now. Oh well.</p>
<p>I actually love reading why/where people cross off places they’ve been. It shows the diversity of cc.</p>
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Its likely students go to the schools in spite of the city, not because of it. </p>
<p>There are many schools located in urban areas that are not the best parts of town. My s spent a summer at one and got his car broken into. There has been a lot of crime in recent years in the are surrounding that school. Students can, unfortunately be easy targets. </p>
<p>Bottom line, if a student or family is , for whatever reason, uncomfortable in the environs surrounding a school, its as legit a reason to scratch it off the list as there not being a Starbucks on campus :rolleyes:</p>