<p>I love Yale, and it’s reasonably safe, but let’s be honest: it is not safer than most suburban shopping malls. It is similar to the downtown areas of many medium-size cities. The area around the campus is quite safe, IF you act reasonably, and if you secure your belongings. You cannot leave your door open, your bike unlocked, your laptop unattended for a few minutes. But you are very unlikely to be mugged, unless you go some distance off-campus at night alone–something you’re not likely to do, especially as an undergraduate.
To me, the bottom line is that safety should not keep anybody from going to Yale as an undergraduate, unless the person is unusually imprudent.</p>
<p>Even if you go “some distance off-campus at night alone,” you are still very unlikely to be mugged. If you went wandering, it is much more likely that you would be stopped by the police or by a local resident, who would ask you if you were lost. Sure there are a few areas about 2 miles from the Yale campus that you might want to avoid between 9pm and 3am at night because of drug or prostitution activity (mostly because they would be unpleasant, not necessarily dangerous), but that’s true of any town of more than 10,000 people. All that said, yes you can reduce your risk if you are familiar with your neighborhood and take precautions like staying aware of your surroundings and not walking alone in places/times where nobody else is around. This is true of any city, town, village or rural area.</p>
<p>You definitely have to lock your bike very well (or even keep it inside if you don’t know how to do this), but that’s true of any city. A city with bike theft is actually a good sign because that means it is safe to bike and that people live in close proximity. Buffalo, Providence, Gary, Newark and Hartford have little bike theft but that’s because compared to a place like Ann Arbor, DC, New Haven, San Fran, Boston, Madison or Boulder, relatively few people live in the center. New Haven actually has a huge cycling population, one of the biggest in the country, because the neighborhoods surrounding the downtown area have a population density equivalent to Brooklyn or Chicago.</p>
<p>That said, New Haven definitely doesn’t have the type of bike theft you see in NYC and Philly, where people go around with liquid helium and car jacks cracking locks open. Still, if you have a fancy bike ($800+) for racing or something, you might not want to leave it outside overnight if you were a broke student.</p>
<p>Re: Laptops, leaving them unattended is a REALLY bad idea anywhere unless you are in your own home. 90% of laptops are stolen by other students. Even if you just have one roommate sharing your room, a cable lock is a good idea.</p>
<p>The biggest risk, by a factor of about 200, is getting hit by a bus, car or truck. Mostly this is a problem if 1) you decide to drive off campus and go to Vermont or something (this is true anywhere, luckily, most students at Yale do not drive regularly), 2) if you go bicycling and aren’t properly trained (sadly, at least three Yalies have been killed in the past few years while bicycling in other cities, many more have been injured while bicycling in New Haven), and 3), since Yale hasn’t done nearly as much to promote street safety as some of the other big campuses out there, students who walk across streets while watching videos on their iphones are putting themselves at risk.</p>
<p>However, students, staff and faculty at Yale have been hit and killed every year even if they didn’t do one of the above things, so you have to be cautious. Again, true of any place that has vehicles, though New Haven hasn’t been nearly as progressive recently at promoting pedestrian safety as other cities.</p>
<p>People run hella red lights here, but walking across the street right after a light changes is the only time I would ever feel unsafe.</p>
<p>“Ann Arbor, DC, New Haven, San Fran, Boston, Madison or Boulder”… um, except for DC (which has a Northwest surrounded by three blighted quadrants)- New Haven is clearly an unappealing and dangerous place to live compared to those other college towns. I mean if one weren’t affiliated with the university, who in their right mind would live in New Haven? And to say it’s like NYC is quite an insult to NYC.</p>
<p>Based on the time I have spent there- a couple times to visit my sister and her graduation, New Haven is one of the worst cities I’ve ever seen (similar to Trenton and Camden, NJ, East St. Louis, IL, Gary, IN and Hartford and Bridgeport, CT.)</p>
<p>but Yale itself has amazing architecture and they have an excellent police force, so if you live on campus and stay at all times close by- you’ll be fine. Having the huge cemetary right on campus is kinda sketch though.</p>
<p>“Having the huge cemetary right on campus is kinda sketch though.”</p>
<p>The already dead really aren’t much of a problem.</p>
<p>BTW - get out a little bit. There are also many other nice areas in New Haven besides the Yale campus.</p>
<p>posterX is a great booster for Yale, but in fact, New Haven’s downtown is fairly gritty.
But for an undergraduate, here’s the real question: when, if ever, are you likely to go anyplace that you feel unsafe? The answer is that you will hardly ever feel unsafe on campus, except maybe in the middle of the night if you are alone.
The only other things I can think of are the following:
You might not want to walk alone from the train station at night.
You might not to want to go down to Wooster Square for pizza alone (highly unlikely that you would do this alone anyway.)</p>
<p>If you want to buy groceries or go to the drugstore, you wouldn’t want to walk to Shaw’s or CVS alone at night.</p>
<p>But there are some stores up on Broadway that would be fine at night–not Shaw’s or CVS, but we’re talking about undergraduates.
I think the situation is different for graduate students, especialy if they live off campus.</p>
<p>The only parts of downtown you’re likely to be in, unless you’re going to a specific restaurant, are for pizza, etc. on Wooster Street, which is safe, and maybe the club area around Crown St. On weekends, hundreds of suburban white kids mill in the street as the clubs let out.</p>
<p>Having spent a lot more time in New Haven than just “two visits to see my sister” - I would disagree, cmburns. Also I’ve recently been multiple times to all of those other cities you mentioned, and there’s simply no comparison between them and New Haven. </p>
<p>For one thing, New Haven has 120 restaurants, 30+ coffee shops, and a bunch of 3-5 star hotels (including a W Hotel offshoot) within a couple minutes walk of the Yale campus in the city center – whereas some of the cities you mention literally don’t have a single hotel, coffee shop or restaurant. </p>
<p>Also, a lot of people choose New Haven over NYC - mainly because they can have a 5 minute commute to work instead of a 50 minute commute, and afford a 2BR luxury apartment or loft instead of a tiny, polluted studio with a view of 10 lanes of traffic. New Haven is easily one of the best mid sized cities in the country by virtually any standard measure, and it’s far easier to live in than Manhattan (though only 70 miles away, many people even live there and commute from NH to NYC, and travel between the two for events, parties and such). </p>
<p>Whether or not you would want to live there, it’s certainly a better all-around, and much more integrated, “college town” than any of the other Ivy/top university host neighborhoods (see the other threads about New Haven for many more people’s opinions on this) and I think that’s proven by the fact Yalies are so much happier than their counterparts at the other Ivies.</p>
<p>Come on, posterX–Yalies aren’t happy because of New Haven! They’re happy because Yale is great. Honestly, Cambridge is nicer than New Haven, with the bonus of really easy access to the rest of Boston. But that has the effect of making Harvard more outward-looking and a bit less of a community than Yale. Both have pros and cons. I will say that I didn’t find Providence to be too impressive.</p>
<p>Providence is actually pretty nice. It’s small but has a lot of restaurants. Brown’s location is beautiful, up on the hill above Benefit Street - a truly historic neighborhood - but it is kind of a hike into the city itself, made longer by the need to climb back up the hill.</p>
<p>Although the campus isn’t that bad, it still seemed a bit grubby. The city absolutely sucked though. It was dirty, uninteresting, and did not seem safe.</p>
<p>Don’t be worried besides look at Detroit, you have the better end of the stick.</p>