<p>This is a common topic on the Yale board.</p>
<p>The simple answer is that Yale is NOT more dangerous than other places. Very few Yale student experience violence while at Yale. The crime statistics are worse, per student, at places you may not even imagine are dangerous, like UC Berkeley.</p>
<p>As several other posters noted, perceptions of risk are notoriously unreliable. If you want to get useful info, you can look up the crime statistics for most universities online quite easily, as they have to report these.</p>
<p>That being said, New Haven is not the suburban or small town campus that some might prefer based on where they grew up and where they like to live. You have to keep your eyes open as in any other urban area (see the recent and many older threads on New Haven for more on this).</p>