DS is deciding between Mines, Rose-Hulman, RPI, Seattle University and waiting to hear from UCSC. DS really likes Mines during two visits, and Computer Science is the fastest growing program. Mines has a more of a reputation for the hard sciences than CS. We’d like perspective on how their reputation might be evolving given how quickly the CS program is growing. We’re OOS and looked specifically at mid-to-small sized schools with strong engineering/CS programs.
Hi @Marcelle - I keep hearing great things about Mines. My son is also admitted OOS.
We are also wondering if Mines can handle the growth (ie, class sizes, # professors)?
And, how is recruiting?
Have you already visited? We are going on 3/16.
@sunnyschool Where are you from? We’re from the San Francisco Bay Area. We’ve visited twice, most recently my DS shadowed CS classes and really liked it. The students told him the CS class sizes aren’t really impacted, you may just not get your first choice in times. We also hear great things about Mines, our son likes the culture, the students, the size of the school and the fact that the school wants to see students succeed.
I am a first-year student at Mines. My major is Applied Math and I’m minoring in comp sci. I’ll be graduating in 2021.
The CS department is amazing. I have actually enjoyed those classes more than my major specific ones! They do an amazing job of getting extensive student feedback and responding well. For example, in my 261 class, there have been like 7 surveys (one for each module) that ask us how much time we spent on assignments and what they can do to improve. When a lot of us struggled with an assignment, they gave us an extension. The faculty care about us as people more than they care about our grades. A student instructor I had this semester sent out amazing emails before each exam to encourage us!
Also, the department has a lot of amazing research going on. https://cs.mines.edu/research/
Mines students in computer science get offers from Trimble Sketch up in Boulder, and Pivotal in Denver, and west coast offers. Oracle, Google are also in Broomfield and Boulder. Colorado Springs and Fort Collins also have many high tech companies like HP, Broadcom, Keysight, AMD, and Intel that hire software engineers.
Trimble bought Sketchup in Boulder.
https://www.sketchup.com
Mines also has very good connections at Harris in Colorado Springs and Lockheed Martin in Littleton CO (south Denver)
Netapp in Boulder is offering U of Colorado CS grads with bachelors degrees $110,000 starting salaries this spring!!!
, I am sure Mines student also
get those offers. Its a cloud storage company in Boulder (and California ).
https://www.netapp.com/us/index.aspx
Also look at Spectra Logic in east Boulder, lower pay but good company, that designs huge robotic tape drive storage systems-
https://spectralogic.com
Seagate, a magnetic and semiconductor storage firm in Longmont CO hires CS, CE and EE grads-
https://www.seagate.com
Western Digital, another storage design center in Longmont, hires some Mines and CU grads.
Magnetic and semiconductor storage is a special strength of the Longmont/Boulder area.
@Marcelle Which did your son pick? Mines is best known for petroleum engineering,which is a branch of chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, geophysics, geochemistry, and earth sciences. All those students get recruited by the Oil and Gas industry in Texas, Colorado and California largely. Its not as well known for physics or chemistry, unless its earth sciences or energy related. Mines has a very good tie to National Renewable Energy Lab, a DOE lab in Golden,just a mile or two from campus, which studies wind energy, solar energy and geothermal energy solutions.
In Colorado, the U of Colorado has stronger physics and chemistry programs , as well as molecular biology and biochemistry, and a larger pure math program , but Mines is the better teaching college, smaller, more personal. Mines offers mining engineering, which is a shrinking field, but students of metallurgy still get jobs in Colorado, Montana and Nevada metal mining industry.