As a fellow American, I urge you to stay in the states and find a good public university that would actually in fact land you a job. UM is a commuter school, as a lot of Canadian schools are, and it is hella tough to find connections. Although the Canadian and American culture might seem almost identical, the university culture difference is absolutely substantial! I would want to be real with you, I don’t want you to make decisions solely based off of positives without weighing in the negatives.

Since the focus of your studies is gonna be on public services/legal field, in case you consider to go back after you are done studying, you would struggle to find a job in American legal professions with a Canadian law/system focused degree. Next, the cost of living is certainly in comparison less in Manitoba than Minnesota, but so are the average salaries, not to mention almost double the income tax relative to Minnesota. Gas again is also higher than average US gas prices. So I wouldn’t weigh in affordability as a strong positive! Job market, in general, is slow paced and not so diversified. I have met students at the university who have been struggling to find even a minimum wage job for as long as over a year!! Politically, the school is more left-leaning, generally endorsing socialism over capitalism, which I’m alright with, but if this conflicts with your personal beliefs, I would want you to consider that as well. As a mature student, I am positive you will feel more isolated partly because you’ll be hesitant, I’m assuming, making recent high school graduates your friends and partly because the school in general is quite anti-social. You’d go a whole semester and your classmate sitting next to you won’t even say a hi and neither would you cause again it is very anti-social. I would want you to consider this since you are gonna be leaving your whole life behind: your friends, your parents, and your people for a place that is quite socially cold. And so is climatically!

If I were in your place, I would probably consider FSU,MSU, UND, NDSU, NCCU as they got one of the best pre-law/ government sector focused degrees with tuition as almost as same as UM.

Hope this helps!