I lived in Denver and worked with a guy who did an M.Arch at CU Denver and he said it was a more traditional approach to design but it also depends on who you get.  He loves what he's doing now, and a lot of his classmates are well paid at corporate firms.  

as far as the city, I think nothing beats Colorado weather.  300 days of sunshine a year! theres a big bar scene, lots of craft beers and breweries. The building with architecture is right at the end of Larimer where there are lots of nice restaurants and bars and hole in the wall places. skiing hiking biking running.  theres not very good transit in Denver I have to say, at least not anything compared to Europe. 

I think that jobs here are about the same as where you come from in terms of its more about portfolio, personality, networking, and skills.

I think its most important to pick the school that's best for you.

cocoa:

If you can't get into Berkeley and CU Denver is your only option for being schooled in the U.S., then it is what it is.

CU Denver is a strange bird.  For one thing, the undergrad a-school was at the main CU campus in Boulder and the grad a-school was in the smaller downtown Denver campus.  This fall, there will be a BS Arch offered at CU Denver, for the first time, so that ought to solidify its position.  At any rate, I got the impression that's it's a traditional program that doesn't push the envelope.  When I was admitted, I visited and students didn't seem that happy.  However, there was a transition going on, with a new dean.  Regardless, I called them up to see if I could come the following autumn, to which they agreed, and was going to drop where I was doing M.Arch. after the first semester, but thought "WTF, 2.5 years to go, and I'm done," so I stayed.

Denver is a mix of good and not so great, but mostly good.  It's an inland Western city, so it will not have the array of cultures and amenities found in LA or SF ... or maybe even Seattle.  It depends on where in Europe you're from.  It seems that the Colorado culture is very oriented toward outdoor recreation and microbreweries, if that's your bag.  OTOH, it is a large metro and, with more Europeans coming over, every second-tier city has more diverse populations.  The fact that the program is downtown is a good thing.  The students are more varied and mature.  It won't be crawling with "kids," like the Boulder campus.  Also, their arch. school picks up a diverse student body, so you'll meet people from a lot of places.

It's what you put into it.  If you seek out the projects, professors and support, you will find it.  The good thing about CU-Denver is that internships are available in the last year of the program, possibly both semesters, and you get credit for them.  There are some larger firms around the area.  Also, note that many of the big cities love to bash their own "backyard" school (Bay Area disses Berkeley, Seattle disses UW, and Denver disses CU) but then they STILL hire them, and they become architects.  I've only known one CU-Denver grad, with an unrelated degree, and he has done well at big firms.  He even relocated out of Denver into a major firm with CU under his belt.  At the very least, you can get some good experience sticking around Denver for a couple of years to work and then move to California or wherever.

I think that, while it's not a bells and whistles program, it's now a stable program ... and it's in a nice enough city.  The only reason I didn't go is because I banked on getting into at least of ONE of my top choices, which only required calculus and graphics training, and I did NOT take physics for the CU-Denver 3 year as a "precaution."  Had I taken physics, too, I would have definitely gone to school there (or Georgia Tech, where they also wanted physics)!

Chin up ... and it should be fine.

Denver is a VERY nice, clean, up and coming city to settle down and live in for the average American, but if you are European and this is merely an episode of your life before returning home, you might want to think about living somewhere in the states that is more "exciting".  Denver is a steak-and-potatoes, middle management town in the middle of fly-over country, with all the good and bad things that implies.  The coasts are where the real excitement is, by and large.

CU (and presumably CU Denver) has never had a particularly strong program.  In fact, in the mid-'80s they came dangerously close to loosing their NCARB accreditation.  Try to get in somewhere better if you can.

I can't speak to the quality of the program, but Denver is a great place to live.

I knew I wanted to study architecture in High School so I applied to all out-of-state schools because the CU Denver rep was not stellar at the time. It is much better now, but I don't think it would compare to the best state schools throughout the country. It is possible that with recent changes, they are on the cusp of improving drastically, but that is a gamble.

My only complaints are that Denver doesn't have a terribly cohesive design community/ culture, but other aspects of life here more than make up for that, like the sunshine, outdoor activities, the fact that sunday I snowboarded for 6 hours, came home and played 9 holes of golf, or that I can walk out my door and be climbing or fly fishing in 5 minutes. Crime is low, it is clean, people are friendly, thoughtful, and ecologically minded, and amendment 64. These are all really the type of things you consider when looking for a place to start a career, not a place to go to school, but I guess that depends on what you are looking for in your post-grad experience.

That said, Denver is very car-centric and spread out, although downtown is getting better planning and density and there is light-rail connectivity throughout the suburbs which will be finished in a couple months. 

^^ and ^ :

But if he only has that choice?  It sounds like he applied to 2, and got this one.  I don't know the specifics of his situation, but I knew of that 80s "history" and was a little leery, and still wanted to "drop/add" to CU-Denver thinking that a school that had avoided such a mishap would be on its way up.  I don't know ... people from New Mexico, Montana State, and Idaho head up firms, so it depends on the person.  It is, as Nicholas said, very much a cusp thing.

Their starting a BS program is news.  It will be interesting to see how that gets integrated into the a-school downtown, which has only held graduate instruction.  It looks like a decent curriculum, actually, and it would sure beat going to school in the boonies.

See 3rd module (120 crs.) - a lot of arch. electives are required as well. New BSAS:

http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/ArchitecturePlanning/ExplorePrograms/bsarch/Pages/Course-Sequence.aspx

I concur with the positive comments about Denver.  My advice to the OP is based on my presumption that he/she does NOT intend to be a permanent resident of the U.S. but rather is contemplating studying here as a life-experience thing.  That being the case, I see no advantage in attending a fifth rate school in a third tier city.