No I think that's your domain. Where do I begin?
Firstly, just because you have personally never had a grad student doesn't mean much except that your experience was different than mine. I was going to take Calc 3 there this fall, but the grad student teaching the class went on a long rant about unit vectors in two space, then when I talked to him after the class, seemed not to care not only about what I was saying, but also what the other CU students were saying to him. I talked with my math teacher about this, who taught at CU as a grad student herself, and she said that grad students often taught courses at CU. Sure, there was generalization in play, but it was based of personal experience and off someone who taught there.
Secondly, CU's nmo physics is ranked first in the country, but that is for graduate school and thus not related to OP.
Thirdly, I am not trying to tell you CU's program is "shitty": it is not. I just said that there are higher caliber schools that the OP could go to, schools you ironically referenced (i.e. Caltech) within your post. CU has a good engineering program, I don't deny that.
All I wanted to do was ask the OP if he really wanted to go to CU. I felt like maybe to much skiing was influencing his decision. I love skiing, but there are colleges with terrible skiing where I would be much more at home than the University of Utah or CU. Relax, and I'm stoked that you seem to like engineering at CU. I'm taking linear algebra/diff eq there next year, hopefully I'll get your same professor and see you around campus.
