The Mines Experience

I was living in Florida and got a mailer from school. My family was in the process of moving to Colorado so I looked at Mines and the other large Colorado schools and really fell in love with the small size and feel of the campus. Everyone is friendly, and the coursework is rigorous. Many companies know Mines by name and seek out interns that are from our school which has been awesome in finding job opportunities!

It's very rigorous and pertains to many aspects of civil engineering. You can customize your major by choosing electives in your interest of civil, which for me is construction. Many people are fond of structural or geotechnical as emphasis options as well.

No minimum criteria, once you are accepted to Mines you can declare as a Civil major. Mines doesn't have any requirements to get into certain majors like most large colleges as we all fall into what is usually the engineering school at large places. I would say there are 200 civil majors every year and we are all quite close. There is a 131.5-hour minimum to graduate.

Mines has a lot of job opportunities. We have career fairs in the fall and spring with around 300 companies who offer both full time and internship positions at competitive wages. Average pay is around 60 thousand per year and job placement is in the 90s at Mines. Almost every company that hires Mines alumni are engineering firms. Our career center gives you two years of help finding placement once you're out of school and past that the alumni foundation helps you out!

The campus has many job opportunities. It is preferred to have work-study funding for on-campus jobs but many departments will hire you without funding as well. I worked in admissions, the career center, and the Mines Foundation and all gave me around 10 hours per week and worked around my course schedule. Some jobs require you have a certain GPA but most really only care about your work ethic. Summer internships are very popular as well and most students have internship offers by their sophomore years. I have had two internships and am in my junior year.

Mines celebrates Homecoming with a lecture and big football game, a parent weekend where family comes to visit, Engineering days which is a 3-day long party in the spring hosted by the school, and more! Mines has events all year long for many different weekends and weekday activities.

We are a state school so tuition is around 20 thousand in the state or 40 thousand out of state not including room and board. I have student loans through Granite State Management and my parents have Parent Plus Loans. I also get the Colorado Opportunity Fund which is around 300 dollars per class I take.

I have federal financial aid through FAFSA.

Most classes have 2-3 exams over a semester that are 1.5 hours each and one final exam that is 2 hours long. Most will be curved if necessary and some teachers offer corrections for partial credit.

Faculty is amazing, every course I have is lead by a teacher and I would say 90 percent of them have their doctorates. There are plenty of TAs for every course, and the ratio is around 25-30 for upper-level classes and around 100 for freshman-level classes. Some classes are taught in a flipped setting while most are normal lecture-style 2-3 times per week.

I loved on campus freshman year as all students are required to live in the dorms their first year and now live at home to save the rent money. Golden is small so finding housing can be expensive and I live about 30 minutes from campus.