University options for kid

K

KAC

Whatever
Rage3D Subscriber
Hypothetically if your son got into:

Penn State
Purdue
Boston Uni
Michigan State Uni

Where would you put him?

Which state is the safest for sending a kid abroad. Which Uni is in a proper safe Uni town? I know Purdue is but not sure about others. Any thoughts?

He also got into Cardiff in UK and some York Uni in Canada. Still letters are coming in since we applied to 28+ universities.

Tell me how it is.
 
Canada? UK I guess is fine but they have a serious inflation problem and I think healthcare is on strike. USA I'm sure you are aware of all the issues we have already.
 
One of my roommates went to Purdue for Grad School in Civil Engineering. He was a smart dude. I think like 22% of people in West Lafayette were born outside the US, so it's pretty diverse. Of what you listed that'd be my vote.
 
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I really hope he gets into Purdue. We are still waiting for the decision.
 
For the US universities, I don't think they'd have particular problems at any of them. None are small schools and every school is going to draw internationally, plus the communities that build up around universities tend to be more diverse and more liberal than the surrounding area, so in terms of immediate vicinity and the school community, I wouldn't expect any problems.

If you want to look more deeply into it, there are probably crime statistics available either through the school or the town of each, very often published online, that can give you an idea of frequency and severity of crimes.

Looking outside of just the school and town they reside in, being in Boston is probably the most metropolitan/diverse, but it's also the biggest city so you get the normal crime that goes along with population density. I'd say there's probably places within half hours drive of any of them that could potentially be of concern, but you do get a feel for the area when living there and when you travel with other people it gets a lot easier to be safe.

I don't know much about either of the non-US universities in particular, but yeah I'd say Canada is probably a little better on the crime stats and the local demographic of both are probably pretty safe/broadly accepting even if the areas outside of the campus/town aren't.
 
KAC said:
Hypothetically if your son got into:
Which state is the safest for sending a kid abroad. Which Uni is in a proper safe Uni town? I know Purdue is but not sure about others. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

For what it's worth, Boston is THE University town. Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, Northeastern, etc, etc. That wouldn't happen if it was a bad place to live. While there are no doubt areas that you don't really want to go, any experiance I've had has been fine. We walk around the town, etc. A friend lives there.
 
Penn State.

"Is Happy Valley PA A good place to live?"

"There's a reason State College, PA is often referred to as “Happy Valley.” The quality of life is second to none in this central Pennsylvania town, surrounded by mountains and forests and home to 45,000 people."





​
 
Make sure you visit the campus with him before making a final decision. Go while class is in session will give you a good vibe for what is going on at the school.
 
It will be tough but I am thinking about visiting Uni during April. However, we can’t visit in 3 countries to make a decision as we have applied to US UK and Canada.
 
Top 3 universities for Canada
- University of Toronto (14th N/A, 16th World Wide) - Toronto
- University of British Columbia (29th N/A, 33rd W/W) - Vancouver
- McGill University (41st N/A, 44th W/W) - Montreal

From my understanding, Montreal is easily the safest city of those. Although UBC is located in the worst ranked for crime in Canada, it's pretty far removed in general. It's campus being some what isolated out on a peninsula, surround by ocean, huge regional park and rich suburbs from both Vancouver's downtown and far flung from the city that tanks Metro Vancouver's crime ranking the city of "Surrey". Toronto I don't honestly know allot about, other than it is massively larger than Vancouver of course.

**Note** I'm a little bias on Vancouver of course.
 
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We are still waiting for UOT and UBC. McGill was a no.
How is UMASS Boston? He got in on that as well.
 
KAC said:
We are still waiting for UOT and UBC. McGill was a no.
How is UMASS Boston? He got in on that as well.
Click to expand...

No firsthand experience, but doesn't sound that hot based on what I'm reading. UMass Amherst is the way to go in the UMass system if you can get in.
 
for Michigan, he's better off with university of Michigan vs Michigan state as U of M is more popular/well known
 
Well Michigan State just had a lethal incident but seriously this can happen to any campus in the USA.
 
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