Living Car Free - Which Grad School is More Bike Friendly?

My daughter is shopping at grad schools and has been offered admission and financial support from a few and is waiting to hear from a couple others. I was hoping someone could comment on the bike friendliness and quality of public transportation for these schools and their surrounding area.

The schools she is looking at are:
MIT
Princeton
Johns Hopkins (Homewood campus)
UCSD Scripps
Cal Tech
NYU
Columbia
UCLA

MIT - super car-free friendly. You'll never need a car to get to any of their buildngs -- all accessible by bike, public transportation and on foot.

NYU -- not accessible by bike unless you're willing to risk your life but very easy by foot and public transportation.

Columbia -- I know the main campus is accessible by public trans but not 100% sure about the rest. I also believe that it's far enough on the left side of manhattan that you could use the bike path up the left side and only come in a few blocks to reach it.

I remember hardly a week going by without someone in a car yelling "Get off the road" when I was at Princeton. However, I did ride on Rte 1 between the main campus and Forrestal Campus daily.

UCSD Scripps, if you can afford to live in La Jolla, I guess. But San Diego is not a dense area, so transportation really needs to be planned out on your part. UCSD is a great school, but so are all of the others. I live in San Diego and as a commuter it gets pretty lonely here.

MIT definately... I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use a bike at either Columbia or NYU though...

..

MIT definately... I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use a bike at either Columbia or NYU though...

I wouldn't bike around NYU. There is way too much traffic in that part of town. Besides, I don't understand why anyone would even need a bike at NYU. All the NYU buildings are within walking distance of each other and the public transportation is spectacular in that part of NYC.

MIT, No car needed anywhere in the entire Boston area. Having a car there is more trouble than it's worth.

FWIW I know nothing about the other places, but I've been around Boston plenty.

Thanks for the info. I think we now have a pretty good picture of what to expect at most of the schools. Anyone know about UCLA?

I commute by bike in San Diego and I use to take public transportation.

UCSD has a good bus system that links the campus to a main shopping plaza called UTC (University Town Center) Public transportation runs right through the main street of campus. The buses can get crowded during rush hour, but that's to be expected. I always saw a handful of bike commuters whenever I would pass through campus. There's bike lanes throughout La Jolla. San Diego Bike Club has group rides that starts out at a nearby shopping center near campus. Beautiful Highway 101 with its wide bike lanes is right near campus.

The biggest plus for UCSD is that you can bike year round in mild 50-70degrees weather.