No other state’s flagship is your safety school. Full stop.
The other thing about these bigger state flagships with growing popularity, is that if you’re coming from a top 20 major metro they may see hundreds of apps very similar to yours. I have seen weird admissions decisions from metro schools vs. students from more unique locales and I have a kid at UW Madison (from OOS). Doing CS coincidentally. OOS admission is grower every harder. It’d be interesting to know if this applicant is from Chicago area, Minneapolis, area, NYC, CA metro, etc.
Once you hit an admissions threshold they are looking for qualities beyond your stats and possibly a true desire to attend that institution. It’s hard to personalize your essays if you know nothing about campus and you’re sending out many many apps.