DU was recently ranked as the 10th best college for skiers by Freeskier magazine, a publication that focuses on “all things skiing.”
The magazine started with 30 schools, then used 16 different factors—such as average snowfall, the closest ski resorts and college statistics—to narrow the list down to 10.
The University of Utah is ranked number 1 with a score of 99. Sierra Nevada College comes next, followed by the University of Colorado at Boulder, Westminster College, the University of Alaska at Anchorage, Montana State University, Gonzaga University, the University of Nevada Reno and Western Washington University.
DU is ranked 10th with a score of 80.6.
The three most important factors in determining a school’s ranking were “distance to closest resort,” “average annual snowfall of closest resort,” and “number of ski areas within 100 miles.”
Here at DU, our closest ski resort is Eldora Mountain Resort, which gets an average snowfall of 300 inches annually. Within 100 miles, we have nine ski areas, including Breckenridge, Vail, Loveland and Aspen.
Several of the other factors were determined by ratings on ZRankings, a website that uses different algorithms to determine how good a ski resort is. Freeskier took four different scores into consideration: the average score of all resorts within 100 miles, highest snow score of any resort within 100 miles, largest score within 100 miles and average score of all resorts within 100 miles.
Other facts about each school were considered as well, including average annual tuition, percent of students receiving grant aid, professor-to-student ratio and graduation rate.
For DU, the average annual tuition is $42,090 and around 42 percent of students receive grant aid. Our professor-to-student is 1:11 and the four-year graduation rate is 67 percent of students, which is the second highest of the ten colleges.
Other factors include whether or not the college provides transportation to the surrounding ski areas, the number of courses offered with regard to skiing or snow and major film premieres on campus throughout the year.
Students at DU are able to go skiing once the season starts thanks to the University Ski Bus, which goes up to the mountains on the weekend.
The size of each school’s ski club was also taken into consideration. According to the magazine, our DU Alpine Club has around 460 people, making it the second -largest out of the top ski colleges.
The final factor was the legality of marijuana. While it did not carry as much influence as the other categories, it still did help four colleges in gaining extra points.
“I’m really excited for skiing. We’re so close to some of the best skiing in America and I feel like it would be a shame to pass up that opportunity. DU being [rated] a great skiing school just means that there are more ski bums like me to go skiing with,” said Kyle MacDonald, a freshman majoring in Biology from Newton, Massachusetts.
