Colorado School of Mines

Colorado School of Mines is one of a handful of off-the-radar technical colleges that’s accessible to exceptionally strong students left in the dust by the single-digit admit rates of Cal Tech, Carnegie-Mellon, Harvey Mudd and the like. Smaller, more focused and more of an ‘applied science’ place than those tech behemoths–and much easier to get into–, “Mines” offers engineering of all types (with some obscure sub-fields found at very few places), a stellar applied mathematics program, biochem, computer science etc. With only 7,000 students, Mines is less monastic than Harvey Mudd and decidedly more intimate than mammoth Georgia Tech. Predictably, Mines has more men than women but the school has a long tradition of training female engineers and with 300+ graduating every year, their impact is considerable. Mines graduates who go directly into the workforce have an average starting salary of over $70,000 and even amidst the Covid-19 pandemic nearly every one of them landed a job. And is there a better setting for a college than Golden, Colorado? This small town in the foothills just outside of Denver is a tourist mecca (Coors beer is made here and figures prominently) with a beautiful main street of cafes, restaurants, bars, and cheesy souvenir shops, all a short walk from campus. And the town is a major gateway for adventure sports in the Rockies. The Orediggers play in NCAA’s Division II. Yes, you can still come to Mines and learn how to blow stuff up just like they did in the 1890’s, but the college has matured into a wide-ranging, first-rate technical university with a beautiful–and largely modern–campus. The campus was empty when we toured so the normal energy was absent, but it’s one of the best examples I’ve seen of a campus dominated by beautiful, human scale modern architecture in a way that does not seem sterile or institutional. Colorado School of Mines is a hidden gem. With students from all 50 states now enrolled, the ‘hidden’ part may soon come to an end. @coschoolofmines