I am, of course, well aware that New York and California have larger populations than Wisconsin. But New York’s population (19.7 million per 2014 estimate) is approximately 3.4 times the size of Wisconsin’s (5.8 million), yet New York enrolls almost 30 times as many students at Michigan as Wisconsin does (New York 1,654 v. Wisconsin 58). So it’s got to be more than just population. Part of it is that many Northeasterners don’t like their own public flagships, which for the most part are not as highly regarded as the top privates in the Northeast, and not as highly regarded as Michigan . Wisconsinites for the most part love the University of Wisconsin, which is highly regarded, and rightly so. So Wisconsinites in far larger numbers opt to stay home and attend UW Madison, which many deem as good, or almost as good, as Michigan. For many New Yorkers, Michigan is a notch or two above any school in the SUNY system. For similar reasons, Minnesota, a state with a population slightly smaller than Wisconsin’s (5.5 million), sends almost 3 times as many students to Michigan as Wisconsin does… Minnesota’s flagship, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, is a perfectly respectable school, but it’s not viewed as being as good as UW or Michigan. Far more Minnesotans attend UW than attend Michigan–it’s closer, for one thing, and Wisconsin and Minnesota have tuition reciprocity, for another. But despite all that, far more Minnesotans than Wisconsinites find Michigan an attractive alternative.