The Golden location, only 15 miles from Denver, may be a lot better for a civil engineer.
Mines programs offer harder home work sets and tests,
and more math required. I might ask both schools about placement. I volunteer up at Colorado State in EE, and their job placement rate is a little low in EE. Mines should be higher for job placement, but ask specifically about Civil engineering placement. Denver has a lot of consulting firms, so I bet Mines places over there. CSU may also
have some ties but Fort Collins is really far from civil engineering top consulting jobs. Fort Collins is about 150,000 and about 65 miles north of Denver. Golden is only 15 miles from Denver, much more tied to Denver, and on the light rail system.
Mines has teaching professors and research professors, smaller class size, and a much smaller campus.
Its almost like a private school, for a public school price. It does not have as many graduate programs as Colorado State offers. Mines also offers way less social sciences and humanities classes.
Mines has less girls overall but MORE girls in engineering than Colorado State.
Mines does offer project management and economics majors too.
Colorado State has strong health sciences, agricultural sciences, and soil sciences and biology focused programs with the vet school up there. It has some business programs as well. Colorado State built a brand new football stadium, if that matters at all. Fort Collins is a nice community and the professors care a lot up there.
Colorado State is known to have the easiest tests of the three big engineering schools in Colorado : CU Boulder, Mines and CSU.
Many students can finish at Colorado State in only three years, if they have AP credits. Mines will probably take
four years but the student gets a LOT out of the Mines education, a way of solving problems. Mines also has field work for EVERY STUDENT. So Civil engineers will go into the field and learn surveying and have a required industry field study to get a bachelors degree.
Mines requires much higher math test scores to get in, than CSU. Mines has more serious students and less drop outs, I believe, although some students find it too mathematical and transfer to CU or CSU.