I went to graduate school in UMD-CP and still work in the area. I lived at grad hills while I was at school because I didn't have a car and because at the time I was working two jobs on campus and needed a short commute. We had several break-ins in grad hills while I was there, as well as muggings. If you don't have a car, the shuttle and metro system are stellar and you will do just fine, but I used to try and get myself home before midnight because ... see previous sentence. I had the honor of being there for the one-homicide-a-day streak.
Yes it is less safe than other neighborhoods in the area, but name one urban(ish) university town that is 'safe'. The nature of housing around universities tends to run on the cheap end, which tends to attract residents of lower socio-economic and transient backgrounds. Lower household earnings are correlated with (not causal of) higher crime rates.
My tongue in cheek advice would be that, in general, the closer you are to Langley Park, the earlier you should try to get home. Hyattsville has recently undergone a rejuvenation of sorts and is actually quite nice (in a transposed yuppy townhouses sort of way).
All of that being said, as soon as I got a car, I moved to Silver Spring and absolutely love it here. My reasons are as follows:
- No more college students
- Nicer amenities in apartments with landlords being more responsive because it's not a college town where they can find 50 other people to replace you in a heartbeat
- Fantastic downtown area
- Always in the opposite flow on traffic on the beltway
- Free shuttle to campus
- New library and new transit center under construction
- Red line trains run every 2-4 minutes going into the DC in the morning (you have to go into DC to switch over to the green line into CP)
- Residents tend to be young and many of them go to UMD so finding roommates in the same boat as you shouldn't be a problem
- 16th st buses drop you 1 block away from the white house (straight shot down)
- Big real estate boom just before the bubble burst means you can now rent homes that were supposed to sell as luxury condos for relatively cheap
- I have parking and don't have to worry about street parking
Downsides to silver spring:
- The apartments tend to have higher income requirement thresholds, so if you are 2-3 students with no/bad credit and GA/TAships, you may not get approved
- Our apartment's waiting list was 3 months (I think that was because we moved in just before fall semester started)
- A bit pricier
- Foot traffic around the discovery building can be rage inducing during rush hour
- Red line on the weekends consistently SUCKS
- Georgia Avenue traffic
- Speed cameras
- Not a lot of late night attractions (I know of two bars)
Hope this helps!