<p>Hi, I really need help deciding on a college before the deadline to commit on May 1st. I've narrowed down my choices to University of Minnesota Twin Cities and University of Colorado Boulder. I want to major in chemical engineering.</p>
<p>UMN:
-out of state
-27k per year
-ranked #4 for ChemE
-would be something new and different from what everyone else is doing
-very cold</p>
<p>CU:
-in state
-24k per year
-ranked #19 for ChemE
-a lot of my high school classmates are going there
-close to skiing</p>
<p>I also am considering Colorado School of Mines but it is more expensive than both (28k) and I'm really not sure if having only STEM students at a college is a good fit.</p>
<p>To be honest, I think it now comes down to what you want. </p>
<p>Ranking of 4 and 19 really aren’t that much different. So many other factors are taken into account for these rankings, so we don’t even really know what’s going on. </p>
<p>So I would say in terms of program strength, they are the same.
A 3k difference isn’t that much. </p>
<p>Now, what do you want to do for the next for years of your life?</p>
<p>I just sent in my enrollment deposit today:)</p>
<p>I went to UMN many years ago and was surprised to find after having moved there out of state that a lot of students saw it as a “commuter school” - they lived in the area and even though they lived on-campus, they continued their pre-college lives and ditched campus on the weekends which was a big drawback as far as I was concerned. And it was COLD – </p>
<p>UMN is urban. It is a pretty campus, but it has the light rail going through it, and is a big campus. I think it has 50,000+ students, which is good if you like a large campus. My oldest is graduating from CSE this May (mechanical engineering) and there will be 800-1000 graduates from that college alone! Being near/in Minneapolis and St. Paul, there are alot of job, internship and coop possibilities and with the light rail opening in June, an easy way to get to these jobs. It is cold, but it sounds like your use to some of it being from CO and liking to ski. I don’t know anything about Colorado Boulder. I think having people you know going to the same school can be a plus (as long as you don’t only hang around with them.) UMN has many nice people, but you really have to work to make friends. My sons experience is that his dorm friends in his freshman year scattered, he kept one or two, and then had to make friends each year. (Alot of people move off campus after their freshman year.) UMN is an excellent school if you do decide to go there.</p>