Utah also has interesting opportunities for very strong students to become well positioned for nationally competitive scholarships, notably most years Utah has a Truman scholar (awarded on a state-by-state basis to college juniors) and a Churchill scholar (awarded to about 14 top STEM students nationally to study for a masters at Cambridge University - its a common route into top math PhD programs, and Utah has a strong math undergrad program and faculty). They get a lot of NMFs attending (50+ per year), particularly instate students who get significant merit (grade and test score cutoffs for the various levels of merit scholarships are lower for instate than OOS).
There also seems to be a pipeline through the Hinckley Institute to various DC thinktanks (especially the more conservative ones like AEI) and to work in the state capitol down the road (not solely limited to Republicans, in fact the local Democrat congressional representative attended Utah). And there are 30 competitive full ride (Eccles) merit scholarships per year of which 30-40% go to out of state students, where they put together a cohort with diverse backgrounds and majors, many of whom form quite a close knit group.