My daughter liked Fordham a lot when we visited last summer, and my son has a very good friend who is a freshman there (classics major in fact). The friend took the NMSF scholarship (full tuition, not full ride) over Brown and Berkeley among others, is in the honors college and so far is loving his time there. I saw him over Christmas break and he says they are in midtown about once a week and that it usually takes about an hour on the subway. According to him they do not take the train because it is too expensive, and the Ram van is hit or miss with traffic/when it is running. As far as academic rigor, and realizing this is all anecdotal, he does not seem to be working as hard as his classmates at MIT and Princeton, but he finds his classes somewhat challenging.
The Rose Hill campus is very nice, and as the father of a daughter it appeared to be very safe with gated entries at several points. It is basically one large enclosure within the Bronx, so the campus itself felt open, although it is pretty small if that makes any sense.
As far as academic rep, I am in the wrong part of the country and a grad from a different Patriot League school, but generally I do not think that Fordham ranks quite as high on the esteemed prestigiosity scale as Lehigh, Bucknell, Colgate, etc. Stats wise it would seem to be slightly easier to get in than most Patriot schools (excepting maybe Lafayette). I personally would think of it as more similar to Nova than most of the Patriot League. One area where the school really shines is in the performing arts, and every year there are a handful of kids from my daughter’s various theater troupes who have Fordham on the short list.