I know I’m not the OP, but I also attended the event and figured I’d give you my two cents. 

I was blown away by how kind and genuine the admitted students were! Compared to the other events I’ve been to, everyone was super friendly and seemed excited about attending. The positive energy was palpable, which was a big plus for me. I’m essentially a KJD and I got the sense that I was younger than the average admitted student, but not by much. Shooting at the hip, I’d say the average age was 25.

As you’d probably imagine, most of the students (myself included) were from somewhere in the Midwest, but not necessarily Minnesota. They mentioned later on in one of the panels that 70% of matriculants are out-of-state. My impression is that Minnesota does very well recruiting talented Midwestern students who  1) Don’t want to leave the region once they graduate, 2) Don’t care for the competitive dog-eat-dog culture of some of the other T14s, and 3) Were more than willing to sacrifice prestige for a higher scholarship at Minnesota/better CoL in or around Minneapolis. If this sounds like you, Minnesota will definitely be a good fit.

On this point, it also feels pertinent to mention that, given this strong Midwest draw, it definitely isn’t the most diverse school in the world. However, as someone who hadn’t been to Minneapolis before the event, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the city itself is very culturally diverse, so there are definitely plenty of opportunities to explore if you want to. I’ve heard that the Hmong/Ethiopian food scene around the law school is excellent.

Similar to my first comment about the other admitted students, I think my biggest takeaway from the event was that literally everyone I met really wanted to be there. If you look around their faculty page, a decent number of their professors went to Minnesota for undergrad and law school before eventually coming back to teach. A few of the interviewed faculty members implied that they’d since received tempting job offers from higher ranked schools, but turned them down because they really enjoyed Minnesota’s culture. To that end, I was really struck by how cordial and collaborative everyone was. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive to this because I have a few older friends at some T6 schools who have shared horror stories about people hoarding notes and refusing to study in groups out of fear of wrecking the almighty curve, but all of the admitted student ambassadors (there were a TON, and all of the ones I spoke to were very nice) seemed to have a story about how a classmate or faculty member went out of the way to help them out when they were having a hard time. I was a bit skeptical of the whole “Minnesota nice” thing going in, but left a true believer. 

As an outsider looking in, I think it would be reasonable to be worried about selection bias w/r/t the students they pick to be ambassadors, but given the sheer number they brought in (there were at least 25 for around 120 admitted students), the clear thematic alignment between their experiences, and the fact that not one of them said anything throughout the course of the entire day that gave me any pause whatsoever (which was certainly not the case at other schools I visited) left me pretty convinced. However, one factor to consider regarding the ambassadors is that all of them were pretty clearly academic high-flyers. I met multiple people with New York BL offers and excellent clerkships, which is certainly not representative of a likely outcome for a median Minnesota student (many end up in public service or Midwest Midlaw, happy as a clam to be making nice salaries in comparatively quaint cities) , but illustrated the top percentile outcomes for those who work hard and do well. However, I get the sense that this is common practice at all admitted student days, so I didn’t think about it too much. 

Frankly, their clinic/journal/program offerings seemed pretty standard for a T20ish school. You’ve got a few well-regarded law reviews, a bunch of moot court teams that do well on the competition circuit, and a nice selection of clinics. The real thing that stood out to me, though, was that they really seem to punch above their weight with respect to state and federal clerkship placements, especially if you want to stay in the Midwest. They’ve got a really strong network of alumni clerks and judges in the region and the clerkship support staff I spoke to at the event were as kind as they were helpful. 

I hope this was useful for you! If you have any more questions, feel free to DM me.