<p>I think Mudd definitely wins in comparison to CO School of Mines in terms of everything except cost. If your son has what it takes to get into Mudd then he will likely get absolutely beautiful scholarship offers from School of Mines just by submitting an early action (nonbinding) application to the college (and a list of several better ones that he could apply for). Maybe its because I’m a girl, but my parents would have loved for me to have gone to CSM.</p>
<p>Anyway, I hope that you visit both CSM and Mudd in your college search. Golden, CO is a tiny town that didn’t particularly appeal to me (some say its beautiful though, so you have to judge it for yourself). As far as I’m aware, CSM is the only college there so there isn’t anything to balance out its awful tech school ratio. Denver is close by, but hey, LA is just as close to Mudd 
. From what I’ve heard from alums and current students, the social life is rather depressing, and they pretty much worked hard to get out of there as fast as possible. My physics teacher had some interesting stories, and both he and my orthodontist (both are alums) are incredible, smart, people, but neither seemed to have a whole lot of school pride. I’ve never experienced Mines first hand, but I feel like Mudd is a much more fun and quirky school on its own, and then the consortium adds a plethora of cool opportunities and more interesting, different, people. We pretty much get the advantages of a tight-knit community of science-minded people and the diversity of a university at the same time.</p>
<p>So as not to entirely pan Mines (sorry, that wasn’t my initial intention!), the school is much closer to good skiing, if thats something you care about.</p>