Princeton came in 1,066 out of 1,497 schools, the lowest risk factor of any Ivy League school.

Dartmouth also scored well. Both schools are located in rural areas, which was a big contributor to their score, Port said.

The study, called the 1999 College Community Crime Risk Assessment, combines 11 socioeconomic factors with 10 years of Uniform Crime Reports from the FBI to predict future crime trends.

Other Boston area colleges scored similarly to Harvard. Boston-based Emerson College and Suffolk University also scored a 7, but MIT scored an 8, reflecting a different immediate neighborhood than Harvard.

Peggy A. McNamara, spokesperson for the Harvard University Police Department, said the Harvard students have benefited from a falling crime rate in the surrounding areas.

"Cambridge is doing really well with crime prevention, so we're benefiting from that," she said.

Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Ga. was named the highest-risk college neighborhood in the U.S. with students more than 10 times more likely to be crime victims than the national average. Anna Maria College, in Paxton, Mass., was named the lowest risk.