If you want to be close to Penn, but in an a relatively nice and safe area, check out the following places:
Spruce Hill - Just west of Penn. Many students. Lots of big Victorian homes.
Garden Court - A little further west, but a more attractive and well kept area.
Cedar Park - A little bit of a hike from Penn (15 minutes), but more beautiful Victorian homes.
Powelton Village - North of Penn. Smaller neighborhood, but generally well kept homes.
Fairmount - Quintissential Urban neighborhood. Good access to parks and Center City. Maybe a little far from Penn, but still easy to get to. A little pricier than University City.
Center City - The center of it all. Easy access via the El and Bus to Penn. Safest neighborhood, but also the most expensive.

This thread has some good maps of the area:
http://phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=3958

Penn is in the middle of the 5th largest city in the country, so unless you want a minimum half hour commute, its unlikely that you'll be able to find something as safe as you would like. Crime happens in University City, but its not so overwhelming that people cower in fear.

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- George -

http://www.barackobama.com

I recently moved to West Powelton (across Lancaster Ave from the Powelton Village neighborhood gap27 mentioned). I feel fairly comfortable with where I live but, as with most decent neighborhoods in the city, especially ones that border North or West Philly, am only a few blocks away from some areas that I would recommend staying away from.

Overall, I've found my neighbors to be friendly and have no doubt that they would watch out for me, but I still worry a little about people passing through from other nearby neighborhoods.

As mentioned before, safety and "niceness" in Philly can vary greatly from one block to another. One thing I did before moving was take a look at crime rates at the census blockgroup level from cml.upenn.edu/crimebase

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my advice to pitt princess is to do the unthinkable and actually come out to philly and see what it's like and what each neighborhood has to offer. it's only a 4 hour drive and it will completely alleviate your concerns. i would be terrified if im coming from ruralsville PA to the 5th largest city in the country, and had no idea what i was getting into. plus, it's always difficult to answer these questions because it really depends on your financial situation. if you are making $150,000 a year as a lawyer, than you can more easily afford a high price condo/apartment in the ritzy areas of town. if you are a poor student, then your ritzy options are severely hampered and you'll have to settle for a more feasible alternative.

heh... I moved from ruralsville, Dixie to Broad & Girard without quite knowing what I was getting into :shock:

Luckily, I had some prior quasy-urban experience to cushion the blow. As you can see, I survived the experience ;-)

All that aside, I agree that you should probably take a look around before deciding where to live. If you're thinking about buying, I would even go as far as recommending that you live in the city for at least a year, preferably in a couple different neighborhoods, before deciding where. It's what I did and am very glad that I did.

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Welcome to Philadelphia. Here's how you can help us make our great city even better:

• Write to your state and local elected officials
• Report suspicious activity to the police department

I agree with most of the comments so far. You should visit a neighborhood at different times of the day and night if possible before you move someplace.

I think UCity has great, green, livable areas, amazing architecture, a very diverse and often very active, socially conscious range folks living in the neighborhood. One misperception that a lot people fall under is that the blocks absolutely closest to Penn are the "best" or the safest, when in fact a few blocks west of campus where the number of Penn Undergrads is balanced by regular folks, grad students and faculty are IMO the nicer and more stable blocks in the neighborhood.

Here's a couple of photo tours from the photo section of Phillyblog to give you a sense of the neighborhood.
http://phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=6857
http://phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=6405
http://phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=5309

Actually you should cruise the Photos section generally because there a bunch of photo tours of not just the "scenic" parts of West Philly but a number of them of the less "scenic" parts as well - and there are some shots of at least some of the other neighborhoods mentioned previously as well.