The Safest and Least Safest Colleges
November 2023
Summary: Starting life at a new college is hard enough without having to worry about crime. But many leading universities are as safe as they come.
Safety First
Over the past few decades, there have been many attempts to accurately measure the level of crime at various leading universities, including burglaries, armed robberies, violent assaults, rapes, etc. But different studies often yield different results, since they parse the data in different ways. Some studies, for example, only look at crime that actually occurs on-campus, as opposed to in the surrounding community.
But this doesn’t make any sense. No one goes to Columbia University, for example, to say put on-campus the entire four years. A big part of the reason you go to Columbia is to enjoy everything that New York City has to offer… and part of what New York has to offer, unfortunately, is crime.
Don’t Trust University Data
Another flaw with the data is that some studies rely only on self-reported crime statistics provided by the universities themselves. This is terribly flawed for obvious PR reasons, but also because many universities have come under fire in recent years for failing to properly report and prosecute sexual assault cases. Just because you don’t report crimes, it doesn’t mean they’re not happening. So you can discount a lot of what you read on university websites.
Our Approach
Therefore, what we’ve done here is taken research from a number of different studies over the past 20 years (including the National Center of Education Statistics, the U.S. Department of Justice, the F.B.I., and the U.S. Department of Education) and cherry-picked a number of leading universities that almost always come up on the “very safe” end, and a number of universities that almost always come up on the “be careful” end. It’s not scientific to a tee, but it will give you a pretty good overview of where these schools stand in relative terms.
Final Thought
What it all boils down to is that almost all leading universities do a very good job of keeping their campuses safe. They’re highly incentivized to avoid any bad PR for things that happen on campus, so they maintain excellent security measures. And we applaud them for that. Once you step foot off-campus, however, it’s beyond their control, and you’re subject to the whims of the crime statistics of that area. Bottom line: while you should always keep your wits about you and exercise good judgment wherever you attend college, you need to be extra-careful when you go to schools in certain high-crime communities.
The Safest Schools
All of the colleges on the “Safe” list (see chart) are situated in very nice or, at least, fairly nice surrounding communities. It doesn’t get any nicer than the affluent suburban neighborhood of Princeton, New Jersey. And the small rural town of Hanover, New Hampshire (home to Dartmouth College) is remote, bucolic and pristine.
Universities like Cornell, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, UNC Chapel Hill, Wake Forest and UC Irvine are all located in cities, but these cities are all far safer than the national average, and students typically feel very safe going about their business. Of course, they’re still cities, so you still need to be mindful of your surroundings when venturing off-campus.
And Some of the More Dangerous Schools…
Some of the most prestigious universities in the nation are located in some of the dodgiest communities. While Yale’s iron-gated campus is quite safe on the inside, the surrounding community of New Haven, CT is a hotbed for shootings, muggings, carjacking, etc. Similarly, while sunny Stanford University looks great in the daytime, students are advised to exercise caution at night, and to avoid walking alone in Palo Alto.
UChicago is in Chicago, one of the worst cities in America for gun violence and gang-related mayhem. And when you add in downtown LA (USC), New York City (Columbia and NYU), and Durham, North Carolina (Duke), it’s pretty clear why many students feel unsafe venturing off-campus at these universities.
Best Advice
You shouldn’t automatically discount any of the “High Crime Area” universities based on this article alone. Instead, if you are interested in some of the excellent universities on this list, make a point of visiting the campus or talking with students who go there to get their impression of what life is like and how safe they feel. Everyone has a different tolerance level for city life.
Some students want the security of a super-clean and safe community, while others thrive on the energy and diversity of a big, dirty, messy city. Cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and Nashville are some of the most popular cities in America for a reason, and they provide some of the richest opportunities for cultural experiences and professional internships. You just have to factor safety into the whole equation.
Princeton, New Jersey is a delightful town that’s clean, affluent and safe. But it’s a far cry from living in an exciting city like New York, which is about an hour away by train.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (home of UNC Chapel Hill) is a quaint but bustling college town that features excellent restaurants, a free bus system, and very little crime.
Carnegie Mellon University is located in Pittsburgh, PA, a city that’s much more appealing than most people realize: it’s affordable, quite attractive, and much safer than the average U.S. city its size.
Yale boasts a stunning and safe college campus. But the surrounding city of New Haven is notorious for its high crime rate and gun violence.
UC Berkeley is widely considered one of the best public universities in America. But the city of Berkeley itself has lots of crime, as this handy-dandy crime map of recent burglaries, robberies, assaults, etc. shows.