Safety of location of med schools?

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Safety is a huge concern for me when it comes to medical school so I'm hoping we can start a list of everyones opinions on the location and safety/crime rate of the area where many med schools are located. Just post your schools you would like to get a report on and hopefully someone can answer them.

Here are some schools I'd like a report on:

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Vanderbilt Medical School
Howard Medical School
Meharry
UT-Memphis
Baylor

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Vanderbilt's in a great part of the city. Meharry isn't necessarily in the best part of town, but I don't hear of people getting killed there on any kind of routine basis. I live not too far from Meharry, so you could drive a few miles and live in a safer part of town.

Memphis is Memphis..
 
OHSU in Portland. Crime rate isn't bad, most of the reported crimes are people stealing from cars and stuff. Gangs are a problem but not in SW where the college is. Not too many murders each year either.
 
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Baylor is right in the middle of the medical center. Just don't leave your car windows open. Most apartments and condo complexes have gated entry, with some having a gate attendant.
 
Vanderbilt's in a great part of the city. Meharry isn't necessarily in the best part of town, but I don't hear of people getting killed there on any kind of routine basis. I live not too far from Meharry, so you could drive a few miles and live in a safer part of town.

Memphis is Memphis..


Agreed. If you go to Meharry you can still live in a nice part of town just 10 minutes down the road though. The campus itself should be relatively safe also.
 
If I recall correctly, I think my tour guides were talking about how the area around UAMS isn't the greatest and is a weird mix of med students and poor people. I don't remember hearing anything about the crime rate, but I doubt it's going to be a problem.
 
Interesting how many US med schools are in the "crappy part of the city".
 
Safety is a huge concern for me when it comes to medical school so I'm hoping we can start a list of everyones opinions on the location and safety/crime rate of the area where many med schools are located.
While I respect your concern, this is probably not as big a deal as you make it out to be.

If you do not like the neighborhood a particular school is in, it is very easy to live a short distance away and live in a good neighborhood. There are few schools that can't accommodate that.

Schools (and hospitals, though to a lesser extent) tend to have excellent security systems compared to the public at large. In fact, you could make a good argument that some schools in rough parts of town are safer than schools in suburban neighborhoods will less security presence.

Med school success is largely based on how broadly you apply. Cast the net wide and make impressions not on the zip code of schools you interview at, but the proximity to neighborhoods of your liking and the seriousness with which the school treats campus security.
 
Interesting how many US med schools are in the "crappy part of the city".
Schools tend to like to be near good hospitals. Good hospitals like to be near their patients. You get more patients who are poor than rich. Poor people tend to live in the crappy parts of town.
 
Schools tend to like to be near good hospitals. Good hospitals like to be near their patients. You get more patients who are poor than rich. Poor people tend to live in the crappy parts of town.

Agreed. Med schools tend to be adjacent to, or attached to teaching hospitals. Teaching hospitals are only opened in places with an adequate population density. With high population density, you have higher crime rates. So many of the best med schools will be in the worst part of town. Because that is the best place to put a big hospital. Get used to it -- you will be in such parts of town for med school, residency, fellowship, and if you continue with academic medicine as an attending. And the higher the population density, the better your education generally will be. You will get to see more things. You will get to do more things. It's a huge positive. Except when you have to run to your car after a long day.
 
The Jeanne Clery Act requires all schools to report annually the crime statistics for their campus(es) and the area around the campus.

These should be easy to find with a little Googling.

Here's the report for Columbia which often gets a bad rap for being in a bad neighborhood. The stats for the med school are on page 10.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/facets/0708_safety.pdf
 
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University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences-Campus is relatively safe, but Little Rock used to be the #1 school for gang violence (during the mid-late 90's). They've done a lot to clean up since that time.

UT-Memphis-#1 city for violent crime, however, this is fairly localized to certain areas of Memphis (one reason Memphis is a great place to study medicine). I've lived here for 5 years and never really felt unsafe. The campus is really spread out and located downtown so it's a bit unnerving walking acoss campus at night. I've had friends have their cars broken into (they were generally left in locations that probably weren't the best and left things laying out in the backseat) but I've never had a problem. I think that if you use common sense you'll be fine.
 
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