I live between NY and Philly and the post about Penn was shocking to me. My son ran at Penn Relays for 4 years and I found the area scary, and I went to concerts at the Garden in late 1970’s and have worked in NY since 1987 and never felt like that in NY, not even some cities in Eastern Europe. Columbia is an oasis compared to where Yale and Penn are located.
Agreed about Columbia. My oldest son who graduated from brown last year works as a researcher in a lab at Columbia. It’s safe area. Morningside heights /upper west side shouldn’t create concern. It’s not New Haven or West Philly.
Brown has also renovated its freshmen dorms and is in the process of renovating the rest that need it. Some are fairly new. Many upper classmen live off campus their junior and senior years (my husband did as well back in 1981-82). Plenty of good options in a nice residential neighborhood. Allowed to go off meal plan.
Younger son attends tufts. He’s rented an apt with friends for this upcoming year (he’s a rising junior) that we’ve subleased for this summer and fall since he’s working in NYC for the summer and off to the university of Edinburgh for the fall semester. It was very easy for him to find ppl to sublet as the apt is as close to campus as the dorms. He’ll probably take a meal plan that’s enough for lunch on campus or an occasional dinner. He plans to mostly cook. His freshman and sophomore dorms weren’t the palaces we saw at WUSTL, but they were clean and good enough. He was barely in them bc of his EC engagement and he prefers to study in libraries and coffee shops. Hands down, what he’s like about the tufts campus most of all is that it’s a classic college campus but just minutes from Davis and Harvard squares and Boston.
@OnTheBubble wrote:
Yup, that’s my reading of it: The housing/meal plan cost differential becomes something of a wash as the housing options become more expensive even as the meal plan options become cheaper for upper-classmen.
@suzyQ7 I don’t think Clark would want a gated, Trinity-type campus. On my visit I got the feeling they really wanted to be a part of the community, and are very involved in volunteer work (including co-running a public school for disadvantaged students in Worcester). The campus is definitely not as pretty, but I think its style, while probably less safe, is perfect for certain students.
This is interesting. On the student review site Niche, Clark students rate Campus, Housing, Local Area and Food: A-,A,B+ and A, while Trinity students rate C-, C+, C- and C+.
It’s my impression at Amherst that only the handful of older students (there are has some military vets and CC transfers who can be older than “typical” age, some even married) live off campus. D just went through her first housing lottery and some of the last options chosen were the houses on “the hill” that were formerly frat houses (and very nice), because they are a 10 minute walk away. People overwhelmingly prefer to live on campus.
There is a theme house where the residents cook all their own meals, together.
UMass in the same town means lots of student-ish housing but also lots of demand for it. D’s in the area this summer and the options available were not great and pretty expensive.
Annnd like clockwork, whenever you bring up philly and crime people become obsessed with sharing their stories from the previous century… Again, the Philly of 2016 is not the Philly of 1980 and University City is specifically VERY safe. I do encourage you to look up crime statistics for University City (where Penn’s campus is located) and you’ll find that Penn’s campus is exceptionally safe and of the crimes committed in UCity, the vast majority are committed away from Penn’s campus and are entirely unrelated to students.
And yes, there IS actually an abundance of beautiful, low cost, off campus living options 1-2 blocks from campus. Having literally been a student at Penn who lived off campus, I would know! I toured many of those options with friends and I had many more friends who lived in those options! Gorgeous Victorian homes, smaller studio apartments in former Victorian homes, mid-size apartments in converted row houses-- all in great shape and within 1-2 blocks of campus. And again, let’s not forget the luxury apartment buildings like the Radian and Domus which are barely off campus given that they’re surrounded by Penn buildings. Now, are there unattractive dumps and do students choose to live in them? yup, plenty! But you don’t have to live in them if you don’t want to. It’s your choice- that’s what’s special about Penn- lots of options without the stigma associated with going against the grain.
Definitely visit Penn but also put a little more stock into the opinions of those of us who lived there. Not those of us who spent 35 seconds at Penn relays in the 70s or stopped by on a quick jaunt through town. And as I said before, having lived there for four years, I’ve never felt more safe in an urban environment than while a student at Penn. And yes- that includes time spent living in DC, NYC, Chicago, and Europe. That also includes shorter weekend visits to other American cities as well.
Yes, both my nieces attended UMassAmherst and rented decent houses off-campus, very affordable if that’s what you want.