I don’t know where these stats for UW Madison are coming from. The last number of years around 10% of UW Madison students are Minnesota residents who receive reciprocity. Here are the hard stats from last fall
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2018/09/26/uw-madisons-freshman-class-decidedly-more-out-state/1422809002/
53% in state, 28% percent out of state, 8.5% international (10% Minnesota). I have a kid that just launched to UW Madison from Minnesota. From what we’ve seen the MN admissions to Madison have become more difficult the last years. And there have been whisperings of ending that reciprocity agreement. It makes sense that Madison would want to serve WI residents first and that many MN residents would apply due to reciprocity. Every kid I know attending UW Madison this fall from Minnesota is an academic high flyer that had reasonable stats to apply just about anywhere and had some financial constraints. Including my own kid. Even though U of MN and UW Madison stats are similar as published, I don’t think they reflect what you need to get in as a reciprocity student. And as this news link states, out of state/international admits are trending up at Madison. I doubt Madison substantially cares if out of state (full) tuition is paid from CA or from IL. I do suspect admissions is trending more difficult from IL based on the shifting numbers.
When comparing somewhere like UW Madison and Michigan Ann Arbor, I think you also need to note that the average income of a Michigan Family is 158K. The average income of a UW Madison family is 95K. More families are willing and able to pay high bucks for their kid to attend Michigan and admissions at Michigan are closer to those of a high buck private. It’s not coincidence when these school’s family incomes are high. Admissions knows how to filter apps to get them there. You can search on “school name average family income” to get this info on any school out there. NY times has a bunch of data out there for each school. Madison has set a high priority on serving it’s own population and being affordable for that population.
Oh - just found registrar’s enrollment reports show where students are from. Map on the last page of the link PDF. Looks like IL enrollment at Madison is similar to MN . Last year’s ACT scores 25-75% were 27-32.
https://registrar.wisc.edu/enrollment-reports/