you can get from DU to silverthorne in an hour if you are mobbing with no traffic. usually like 1:20 though driving 5-10 over with average traffic. As for the school, challenging, prestigious, good academics, difficult work load, nice shit, lots of rich kids, lots of chads, its kind of the east coast prestigious school of colorado, at least they are trying to make it like that. I have a friend who goes there and loves it, just doesn't ski a lot due to workload. Parties are kinda ghey, bars are fun. food is good around the area. I go to boulder and am glad i did. that's my 2 cents