The Colorado School of Mines

Date: Jun 30 2004
Major: Chemical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
Mines is really a mixed bag with regards to the quality of education that it provides. It has an impressive reputation for being a great engineering school, and that really impresses the employers. However, when you get right down to it, the school is incredibly easy, fails to deliver any sort of cutting edge education, and is actually quite deficient in delivering a well rounded education. Sure, the students who graduate have a great background in physics and calculus, but half of them can't write a report or read a book that has more words than numbers in it.

As far as my first four years went, I probably partied in Golden, Boulder, and Denver more than I went to class and still have an impressive GPA. Not quite the nose to the grindstone, insanely difficult college that a lot of graduates want to make it out to be. I can't really complain about having fun while at college, but I really do think that Mines' reputation is a bunch of smoke and mirrors and if you are really serious about being a good engineer, go to a "real" engineering school that actually gets its engineering departments ranked in the Nation's Top 10 (for the record, only Mines' petroleum department was nationally ranked last year at #4 or #5).

This school is finefor Coloradoans who benefit from the in-sate tuition, or people who get scholarships, but if you are going to be paying full price, your money is probably spent elsewhere. For me, I am pretty angry that I spent 5 years at this school when I passed up some really great opportunities at other colleges. However, on the bright side, I have had two amazing summer internships and it looks like when I graduate I will have a pretty good petroleum engineering job waiting for me.