Harvard Ranks #20 Most Dangerous (Maybe)

When it comes to rankings, Harvard likes to buckle down and remain on the top—even if it's for the "25 Colleges with Worst Crime Rankings." In an article published today by The Daily Beast, Harvard made the grade as the #20 most dangerous college campus in the United States, and claimed the distinction of reporting more on-campus crime than any other University on the list.

Surprised? Not exactly. But you have to consider that Yale, which landed in national headlines after the grisly murder of grad student Annie Le, is ranked #23—that is, slightly less dangerous than dear old Cambridge. The future seems bleak.

Rounding out the rankings are heavyweights like Brown at #18, MIT at #5, Tufts at #4, and Emerson College, located in downtown Boston, as #1. How exactly did the Daily Beast, an online news media best known for its Cheat Sheet on "read this skip that", decide that Harvard, along with what seems like all of the schools in Boston, is so dangerous?

It turns out that since the passage of the Clery Act in 1986, schools are required to report annually to the U.S. Department of Education crimes on and near campus—including murder, assault, sexual offenses and robberies. The Daily Beast, using the data from the two most recent years, analyzed more than 4,000 schools, weighing more than 50 different criteria for crime. The methodology seems legit. But urbanite schools such as NYU, Columbia, UChicago, failed to make an appearance, which struck FlyBy as slightly odd.

Some good news though: these rankings are not foolproof. The Daily Beast admits that information portrayed may not necessarily be 100 percent accurate due to imperfections in the numbers reported by schools to the Department of Education. Some schools reportedly "game the system"—downplaying their crime rate for fear of bad reputation, while other schools remain "steadfastly honest." Congress is soon expected to make the Clery Act's guidelines more stringent. Let's all hope that once that's done, Harvard may strip itself the honor of being on this list. If not, the only solution that remain may be just to relocate. New Hampshire anyone?