Wellesley Among Safest College Towns: Safewise

WELLESLEY, MA — Parents sending their kids to Wellesley College or Babson College for the upcoming school year can rest assure knowing that few towns with a college are safer than Wellesley.

The town ranked fifth on SafeWise's list of the 50 safest college towns in America. Nearby Brookline took the top spot and neighboring Newton was seventh.

According to the report, Wellesley had fewer than 175 total crimes in 2016, 15 which took place on campus. The crime rate works out to 0.45 violent crimes per 1,000 people and 5.47 property crimes per 1,000 people, according to the FBI's 2016 crime statistics.

To identify the safest college towns of 2018, SafeWise looked at the most recent FBI crime report for each city that met our criteria. To be in the running, cities needed to exceed 15,000 residents and be home to an accredited college that offered four-year degrees. We excluded for-profit institutions, technical and vocational schools, community colleges, seminaries, field-specific institutions, and schools that only offer two-year degrees. Rankings were based on the incidence of violent crime per capita, according to the website.

Click here for the full list.

Image Credit: Dan Libon/Patch