<p>Hellojan, sorry but I disagree. University Park itself may be nice, but you don’t have to go more than 1/4th of a mile west of Penn to be in what most people in the US would consider a “ghetto”. As far as John Hopkins, I’m not sure one should include where the hospital is located with where the campus is located. Yes, the hospital is in a very tough area of Baltimore, but the campus is in a good area that is actually improving.</p>
<p>Also, I think how much “space” exists between the campus and the “ghetto” makes a big difference. For example, it is true that the area south of USC (south-central LA) is known for its gangs and rundown residential area. However, before one gets to this area when leaving USC, one first has to go past a rose garden, two museums (Science and Industry and Natural History), an aeronautical display that takes up a city block, one of the largest football stadiums in the state, and a sports arena. Sure, if one continues another five blocks past this area alone you might be in trouble, but now you aren’t really talking about the local campus area, are you? Besides, all the USC kids party in Westwood anyway (next to UCLA).</p>
<p>P.S. I went to UCLA, not USC–oh, and in response to QuietType’s concern, I’ve been on campus at all of the places I’ve mentioned on here–and have lived in both LA and Baltimore for multiple years–though I now reside in northern California.</p>
<p>Chicago isn’t that bad… Hyde Park itself is fine. Granted there are some nearby neighborhoods that may seem kind of sketchy, but I wouldn’t say that the Chicago campus is ghetto by any stretch.</p>
<p>About 4 years ago D1 was in a national AAU bball tourney that was held in New Haven. She was so excited as some of her games were scheduled to be played at Yale. Then we were so surprised when we received instructions that the girls and parents were not to leave campus and walk around the nearby neighborhoods because it was dangerous!!! What?!?!? I had never heard that before. Loved the campus!</p>
<p>The areas around Hopkins/Penn/Catholic in DC are not good areas. I am sure there are worse places in the world (some places in afghanistan probably), but they are not places that you want to walk around at night. Just because you live in these places and they may have a good street here or there, that does them “nice”.</p>
<p>“University City is NICE, people. Well, speaking comparatively. It seems to me that a lot of people on this particular thread have learned to associate scary with black.”</p>
<p>No, it’s scary when more than just a couple of your friends have gotten mugged and beaten up walking around late night in these areas. Nobody mentioned anything about being scared of black people, so several of you can pick up the race cards that you have been trying to throw down in this thread. There are lots of different types of people that live in ghetto areas, not just black people.</p>
<p>They probably didn’t want the girls wandering around on their own. At Chicago during O-Week, we don’t discourage exploring, but we do explore together, so students have an idea of where the U of C community ends and where the South Side begins. Every year a bunch of students take it upon themselves to see what’s going on in an area that’s not on the map. While I do have friends who take to this rogue exploring, it is also setting yourself up for problems.</p>
<p>jec-- it’s generally not wise to walk by yourself at night if the street is deserted, etc. Not saying that I haven’t done it many times and will continue to do it, but there’s always a possible risk.</p>
<p>jec7483–I question what the source of your information is. I have walked around the areas surrounding both Hopkins and Penn at night many times. Provided you take reasonable precautions applicable in any urban environment (such as, I wouldn’t walk around alone at 3 a.m. in any large American city)–you shouldn’t have any problem. While it is true that there are bad neighborhoods within a few blocks of both campuses–the immediately adjacent neighborhoods are fine (quite nice actually) and both Penn and Hopkins provide a strong security presence in surrounding areas. There is absolutely no reason for students to venture into the bad parts of West Philly (in Penn’s case) or Greenmount Ave/ North Ave (in the case of Hopkins) Are the adjacent areas perfectly safe? No–no place is. People get robbed/mugged in Hanover N.H. and Princeton N.J. too. But anyone who wouldn’t attend Penn or Hopkins due to safety concerns is, IMHO, either misinformed or unreasonably paranoid.</p>
<p>Catholic U is another matter. While I’m sure that the campus is safe, the immediately adjacent area of Northeast DC would not be a safe place to walk at night. That wouldn’t stop me from attending school there if I wished–I just wouldn’t venture off campus after dark.</p>
<p>I agree with bonanza. I can only speak for Hopkins here (as a Baltimore native nearby), but it’s not just some nice streets around Hopkins, its entire nice neighborhoods (indeed, if we’re just talking streets, many of the buildings on streets immediately around Hopkins have been bought by the schools for dorms/bookstore, etc, making it an even more student-friendly environment). I mean, it’s not Claremont, and nobody is saying it is, but it’s not “getto” or anything close. </p>
<p>As someone who lives in a good neighborhood surrounded by bad ones in Baltimore (ie. a situation a lot like Hopkins, with the bad neighborhoods maybe being very a little closer), it’s fine to walk around at night…if you’re smart about it. I would never walk around alone later at night, but with a bunch of friends? Fine. And it’s a bad idea for basically anyone (especially girls) to walk around alone late at night anywhere…it makes me nervous to do it even in the middle of Wes campus!</p>
<p>I mean, sure, if you decide to walk far away in the direction of the bad neighborhoods you might run itno trouble, but why would you do that? Walking around JHU/the area just around it would be fine at night.</p>
<p>I go to Penn, so I guess I live in University City. I’ve walked around alone at all times in the night on campus. Was it smart? Probably not. Did I feel afraid? No. There are Penn security people at every corner and a bunch of lights. I’m probably just as likely to get mugged on campus at Penn as I am to get mugged at any school in the country. I don’t know anyone who has been mugged. Once you start venturing off campus it starts to become a bad neighborhood if you go west or north. There are many students who live a few blocks west of campus and it is perfectly fine. Once you get more than 5 blocks west of campus it starts to feel a little sketchy and I don’t know anyone who lives that far down. However, there is no reason for a student to be walking in that area. There are basic things you can do to be safe, and if you don’t follow them, you will be putting youself in danger regardless of where you are.</p>
<p>omg, sheltered suburban kids hahaha…news flash: non-white people are not all criminals…gasp!</p>
<p>Look, ALL cities have pretty high crime rates…it’s kind of the nature of the beast. If you can’t deal with the (remote) possibility of getting mugged, go to Grinnell or something. Yale is not located in a ghetto. There are lower-income areas several blocks from campus, but that doesn’t make New Haven/Yale a ghetto. Columbia is also not in a ghetto. Neither is Johns Hopkins. Neither is UChicago, or Penn. Or Case. Look, every damn city has “ghettos”…and an urban school is bound to be near-ish one of them. There will be crime, and poor people, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be stuck in Bloods/Crips crossfire every time you leave your dorm. Seriously, have some common sense and it’s really not that bad.</p>
<p>The possible exception is Temple, which is legitimately smack-dab in the middle of a really bad area of Philly, haha.</p>
<p>“No, it’s scary when more than just a couple of your friends have gotten mugged and beaten up walking around late night in these areas.”</p>
<p>Um, at Yale we get emails every time someone gets mugged/beaten/whatever. It’s the law…and this past year, I got maybe one a month. As urban areas go, that’s actually pretty damn good. And thus far, not a single one of my friends has gotten mugged, let alone beaten. Most of the notifications we get are about crimes committed against grad students who live several blocks off campus in not-so-great neighborhoods. If you know where it’s “ok” to go, you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>“There will be crime, and poor people, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be stuck in Bloods/Crips crossfire every time you leave your dorm.” </p>
<p>So, on this thread, folks are posting about schools in “bad neighborhoods” then others post about how it’s not so bad. It would be helpful if anyone knows of campuses that truly ARE dangerous, where one MIGHT be stuck in Bloods/Crips crossfire and/or where campus security is not what it should be.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen where anyone has mentioned that they are worried about being close to a “ghetto” area due to the race factor. I believe it it simply because a person is more likely to suffer from high crime in a rundown area than in a highly upscale area.</p>
<p>I worked for three years for the City of Los Angeles’ Community Redevelopment Department full-time while getting my MBA. This job took me on a daily basis into areas such as Watts, South-Central LA, Hollywood, Highland Park, West Jefferson, East LA, Koreatown, and any other area that needed to be looked at relative to tear-down of existing structures and businesses and rebuilding of new (usually 2 block by 4 block areas) areas or relocating of businesses from scratch to recreate an economically viable community.</p>
<p>Let me be clear, there are white “ghettos”, black “ghettos”, hispanic “ghettos”, Asian “ghettos”, and mixed ethnicity “ghettos”. Ghetto does not just mean “black”–even though I will agree with you that there are more blacks and hispanics in ghettos than whites or Asians.</p>
<p>I think the question here was which colleges are more likely to be in “dicey” areas. The responses I’ve seen so far have not been categorizing based upon race. They have indicated more of these areas are likely to be in the urban cities, of course, and there are more blacks in the inner city, but I do not see this (at least to this point) as a discussion of race, so please don’t try to make it one–and don’t try to paint people’s need to be safe as meaning that they hate other races.</p>
<p>As anyone who has been or been around a teenager at any point in recent history should realize, this is a different question than “Are there any colleges located in the ghetto?” IMO, “ghetto” as used by the OP is way too subjective to lead to a useful thread, so people have latched on to the other part of her question, which was about dangerous colleges. There’s overlap, no doubt, but the questions are still different.</p>
<p>I’ve never been to New Haven, but even if the entire area surrounding Yale could legitimately be classified as a ghetto, no one in her right mind would refer to Yale itself as “a ghetto college.” And you could stick certain campuses in the middle of Stepford and they’d still get called “ghetto” by virtue of some intangible quality or another.</p>
<p>I’m not condoning any of these distinctions, but so far, nobody else has pointed out that they exist, which is strange, and obviously leading to some confusion. The discussions about dangerous campuses and dangerous neighborhoods/cities also need to be more clearly separated, though again, of course there’s overlap.</p>
<p>The series of college books that rhymes with college howler has a section on safety for each college, and a safety grade (B+. C. A-. etc.) I recommend that people who are worried about safety at a college they are interested in should read the book that rhymes with college towel-er on the college they are interested in.</p>
<p>If you want to avoid Columbia and Penn, all the more room there for others who like urban areas and all a city has to offer.</p>
<p>Those who are very concerned about safety of schools that are in the US News Top 100 National Universities or Liberal Arts Colleges can come to Ohio and go to Kenyon in Gambier, population 1,888: a very safe school in a very safe area. Carleton and St. Olaf, in Northfield, Minnesota, are quite safe too, but Northfield has over 17,000 people; a big city like that could have gang violence spilling over onto campus. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>The reason some of us perceive a subtle form of racism in some of the comments is because when someone calls University City (adjacent to Penn) or Charles Village (adjacent to Hopkins) or Hyde Park (adjacent to Chicago) “bad” areas–race seems to come in to play. None of these are rundown neighborhoods by any imagination (take a look at what it costs to buy a home in any of those areas). None of them are high crime areas by any standard, and particularly when compared with other Philadelphia, Baltimore or Chicago neighborhoods. It seems that the only reason someone might perceive these neighborhoods to be “bad” is because the number of people of color may be greater in those areas than what suburbanites may be used to. They are urban environments, not bad neighborhoods.</p>
<p>I know for a fact that when I went to Hopkins, some students initially were fearful of the neighborhood because they saw people who were different from themselves and with whom they had little personal experience (outside of TV, magazines, etc.). Most got over that quickly once they got to know people in the neighborhood. Speaking for myself, I came from New England and, while I considered myself a good liberal when it came to race relations, coming to Baltimore and being in the minority for the first time in my life was quite a culture shock. Looking back, it was a wonderful learning experience because I discovered first hand that, despite considerable cultural differences, all people are essentially the same–with the same needs, desires, and aspirations. </p>
<p>I know that some high school students(and their parents), who consider themselves non-prejudiced, visit cities like Baltimore and are scared (whether they admit it or not) because of the city’s demographics. This fear often is manifested in comments like “Hopkins is in a bad neighborhood.” That is objectively untrue, and serves only to hide their real concerns. I can tell you that most people from Baltimore would find the characterization of Charles Village as a “bad” area completely ludicrous. They know what a bad neighborhood is–and it isn’t Charles Village. </p>
<p>And what’s more, you will gain much more from your college experience if you attend a school where you will not be completely comfortable–whether due to challenging academics, supposed competitiveness, or a location different from what you are used to. Challenge yourselves people–that’s what college is supposed to be about.</p>
<p>Bonanza - I think there are an awful lot of people who associate cities in general with lack of safety, and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with race (though it might). I worked in western NJ-- a pretty rural area-- and my co-workers questioned the wisdom of going into Manhattan after work, which I did often. They were terrified by the city, and it was a much larger issue than race. It was big, and bustling and unfamiliar and it scared them. So when I read the OP, I saw the question as more of a “what areas are different from where I live.” Their choice of the word “ghetto,” for any reason, was extremely unfortunate and I think clouded the underlying question.</p>