General Pointers About Living In Philadelphia (Swarthmore, Penn: credit, top schools, colleges)

[bluemonday]

Originally Posted by 2chicks 1guy

The Bad
Eagles fans

I like this part the best...lol!

[couldntthinkofaclevername]

Since this thread mentioned Delaware County, I figured I would try my best to provide some tips and insight for people about the inner-ring suburbs of Delaware County, one of which I grew up in.

One thing you need to remember is that they border West and Southwest Philly and most of them aren't very large in area so it's basically like bordering West and Southwest Philly no matter how far out into the working class suburbs you go. It simply gets lesser and lesser as you go further out from the city but it's still there. In other words, remember that you are still basically in the city if you're going to live in or go to school in Delco's inner-ring suburbs. Be street smart, lock your cars and houses at night or any time you leave your house alone, and never take for granted that you haven't had anything stolen or been in a fight or been broken into.

If you can handle it though, there's not only lots for kids and families and adults to do but it can be a great place to live. The schools have some of the problems of city schools but Upper Darby is a place to get a more than decent education and plenty of kids go on to college from UDHS and Bonner and Prendie. There's also great extra-curriculars in the Upper Darby School District and a great program for kids with special needs if you happen to need that. There's youth leagues all over, places to learn instruments, plenty of parks and other places for kids to do things, and 69th Street and the surrounding area has lots of shopping and places to eat, as well as the Tower theater and a movie theater, though maybe not the type of retail or restaurants or other things people in more upscale areas have access to.

The inner-ring suburbs are hands down the best area for authentic food of all ethnicities outside of Philadelphia, and for my money I'd say that Clifton Heights is the best place for food out of all of the inner-ring suburbs. Between Rosatti's, The Clam Tavern, The Breakfast Club, and some other neighborhood staples, it's definitely somewhere anybody looking for some good food outside of Philly should check out. If things like the movie theater and the Bazaar were still around, you'd have even more to do and eat and buy and see there.

Everything is also accessible through public transportation for the most part as well, including Delaware County Community College (which is a solid school where you can get a good education on the cheap and play competitive sports, among other things) and other area technical schools such as CHI and Empire beauty schools to name a few. It's obviously not for everybody though.

That's about as best I can prepare anybody for living in the inner-ring suburbs, and I think it's important that we get some objective and not just negative things said about them.


Oh, and another important thing to remember is that Chester is not an inner-ring suburb but its own city. It's very important that you don't mix the two up because Chester is much different than the inner-ring suburbs surrounding Philly.

[cpomp]

Theres much more to Delaware county than the inner ring suburbs.

[couldntthinkofaclevername]

I'm offering advice based on my own experience, and since most people are only saying the bad things about the inner-ring suburbs, I figured I'd give a more objective, complete description of them.

I've never lived in Media or Springfield or on the Main Line or the other parts of Delaware County outside of the inner-ring suburbs. It wouldn't be right for me to try to describe or say anything about places I have never lived in.

[FromGA]

Visitor's Guide to Philadelphia and Surrounding

Contains a bunch of youtube videos related to Philadelphia locations.

[Woof]

Originally Posted by MoorestownResident

Guys, US News rankings are garbarge. Rutgers trumps any public school in PA. Rutgers is one of the largest and most prestigious research universities in the world. Princeton is Princeton. Nothing in PA can touch them.

I was just wandering through this forum and noticed this discussion on universities. Things must have changed a bit since I was looking for a college 35 years ago! Back then, the University of Pennsylvania as a private Ivy League university topped anything else in PA. Princeton was considered a slightly higher Ivy League school, but not by much. U of P also ranked higher than Rutgers. Penn State was considered to be a jock and party school, nowhere near U of P.

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by Woof

I was just wandering through this forum and noticed this discussion on universities. Things must have changed a bit since I was looking for a college 35 years ago! Back then, the University of Pennsylvania as a private Ivy League university topped anything else in PA. Princeton was considered a slightly higher Ivy League school, but not by much. U of P also ranked higher than Rutgers. Penn State was considered to be a jock and party school, nowhere near U of P.

Yea things have changed, but that poster was exaggerating.

[pure_mercury]

Originally Posted by couldntthinkofaclevername

Since this thread mentioned Delaware County, I figured I would try my best to provide some tips and insight for people about the inner-ring suburbs of Delaware County, one of which I grew up in.

One thing you need to remember is that they border West and Southwest Philly and most of them aren't very large in area so it's basically like bordering West and Southwest Philly no matter how far out into the working class suburbs you go. It simply gets lesser and lesser as you go further out from the city but it's still there. In other words, remember that you are still basically in the city if you're going to live in or go to school in Delco's inner-ring suburbs. Be street smart, lock your cars and houses at night or any time you leave your house alone, and never take for granted that you haven't had anything stolen or been in a fight or been broken into.

If you can handle it though, there's not only lots for kids and families and adults to do but it can be a great place to live. The schools have some of the problems of city schools but Upper Darby is a place to get a more than decent education and plenty of kids go on to college from UDHS and Bonner and Prendie. There's also great extra-curriculars in the Upper Darby School District and a great program for kids with special needs if you happen to need that. There's youth leagues all over, places to learn instruments, plenty of parks and other places for kids to do things, and 69th Street and the surrounding area has lots of shopping and places to eat, as well as the Tower theater and a movie theater, though maybe not the type of retail or restaurants or other things people in more upscale areas have access to.

The inner-ring suburbs are hands down the best area for authentic food of all ethnicities outside of Philadelphia, and for my money I'd say that Clifton Heights is the best place for food out of all of the inner-ring suburbs. Between Rosatti's, The Clam Tavern, The Breakfast Club, and some other neighborhood staples, it's definitely somewhere anybody looking for some good food outside of Philly should check out. If things like the movie theater and the Bazaar were still around, you'd have even more to do and eat and buy and see there.

Everything is also accessible through public transportation for the most part as well, including Delaware County Community College (which is a solid school where you can get a good education on the cheap and play competitive sports, among other things) and other area technical schools such as CHI and Empire beauty schools to name a few. It's obviously not for everybody though.

That's about as best I can prepare anybody for living in the inner-ring suburbs, and I think it's important that we get some objective and not just negative things said about them.


Oh, and another important thing to remember is that Chester is not an inner-ring suburb but its own city. It's very important that you don't mix the two up because Chester is much different than the inner-ring suburbs surrounding Philly.

You neglected to mention Gaetano's Pizza, too. I will be hitting them up while watching the Eagles play out this sad, sad string.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by cpomp

Yea things have changed, but that poster was exaggerating.

Seriously. I wouldn't say Penn State and Pitt are leaps and bounds ahead of Rutgers these days, but they are better-balanced research institutions with the endowments to match (Rutgers-NB's is only $700 million). They're a lot more selective to boot (especially Pitt, which has seen a meteoric rise in academic quality over the past 15 years--Pitt's M + CR medians jumped 50 points in the four years I attended).

Penn is no longer that far behind Princeton. Princeton may be mildly more preferable for a core liberal arts education, but Penn's interdisciplinary approach to education (and the slew of top professional schools to match) is really only beaten by Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.

US News rankings have nothing on the garbage of weak, anecdotal opinions outdated by 30 years of change.

[pure_mercury]

Originally Posted by HeavenWood

Penn is no longer that far behind Princeton. Princeton may be mildly more preferable for a core liberal arts education, but Penn's interdisciplinary approach to education (and the slew of top professional schools to match) is really only beaten by Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.

Totally right. Princeton may be tops in the U.S. on undergraduate core studies, but Penn has it all over them in terms of graduate schools and research. And, of course, the Ivies are not the most rigorous universities when it comes to actual workload. The people I know who went to Swarthmore had to hit the books WAY more than the Penn kids, outside of maybe the Engineering kids.