Collegefortwins, glad the comment was helpful! You already have some DU feedback that is more well-informed than anything I can provide. She considered DU, and we visited Denver in pre-college search days and it is a great city and obviously has incredible surrounding outdoors opportunities. Her assessment on DU was on paper only, and she sensed a little more pre-professional bent there than the undecided LAC wanderer she enters college as (although I am sure there are plenty of those at DU, and plenty of “pre-professional” frosh at Occidental - like so many parents, I felt the impressions she formed about colleges seemed, well, pretty impressionistic most of the time 
). I think DU has a business school that it is rightly proud of and makes up a part of its institutional identity - a great strength, but not one that drew my D in. But the IR program is a strength too, so may well be a great fit for your S. At some point, she had to eliminate some schools, and DU was one that just as well could have been on the final app.
We looked at public honors too fwiw. My two cents: looks at University of Delaware for its really strong global/IR focus (including some very unique study abroad programming for freshman students) and its well-regarded honors program - also small student body by public flagship standards; University of Maryland Honors for DC/Baltimore urban proximity/internships plus good honors program with neat housing/learning community structure; and University of Pittsburgh Honors for its great urban setting, all around solid offerings, and rolling admissions (a nice psychological boost in the fall) - it also has a little smaller undergrad population than some state flagships. UPitt’s Honors program is less defined than the other two, but it does have honors housing. All offer some OOS merit (competitive to be sure, but your son’s stats should put him in the conversation), and even with low/no merit the lower initial COA’s of those three can make them competitive with some privates. D ultimately felt they were too big for what she wanted, but I was a fan of all three.