My son wants to attend UW Madison. However the out of state tuition is 53k. Is allowing my son to move to Wisconsin to live, work and establish residency an option that he should be considering? I’ve done some searching on the topic and am not really even sure this would allow for him to attain in-state tuition. Has anyone taken this route? He is a junior now so there is time to make plans.
Are you absolutely certain your son would get in, that you’d consider moving to get instate tuition?
He would move after graduating high school. Our family would not. He would live, work, and pay taxes for a year. We lived in Wi for years so he is really wanting to attend. Yes, pretty sure he would get in. It doesn’t seem 100% that just being a resident for a year guarantees UW would view him as a resident though after reading on their website.
Haven’t read through the Wisc. residency requirement for tuition purposes but most I’ve read require you have lived in the sate at least a year before matriculating.
Update: Ah. Just read that this doesn’t quite do it. I was thinking more like a junior in HS moving with family due to job change would tend to qualify. If you are moving to the state in order to go to school you generally don’t qualify. There may be exceptions however.
Most states expect you to essentially support yourself as well when you move there to eventually give you residency for school purposes. So if you pay a significant portion of his billls, that doesn’t cut it.
I’d say this isn’t very likely to work out, and he should make other plans.
Is there a way you can move to WI yourself with him for say a year or two? That would be the easiest way.
Or Minnesota, they have reciprocity.
Speaking of reciprocity, not sure about your situation, but states do have reciprocity as far as state income taxes goes. Where you pay your state income taxes will certainly be a determining factor for establishing residency. I think that Illinois has a reciprocity with Wisconsin, as well as a couple of other states I think. So say you worked/lived in Illinois. You could then have an address in Wisconsin (move to Wisconsin), work in Illinois and still have state tax witholdings for Wisconsin. I’m no tax person though so don’t take my word for this.
No, this doesn’t really work for UW Madison. Some of the other UW schools you can get around that but it’s usually based on where the parents live and you can’t become “independent” simply because your parents aren’t supporting you financially.
Second, Professorplum168 is incorrect about how taxes, tuition, reprocity, etc works and we do not have it with IL at all. We do with MN.
Third, unless your son has a 34+ ACT and 3.85uw GPA and a ton of EC - you shouldn’t be so confident he would get in - especially as an out of state kid, unless his major is in the L&S area. Which in that case you are enabling a bad decision instead of using this as an opportunity to discuss decisions, financial responsibility, etc.
If you can’t afford to pay full price for Madison out of state, start investigating other options. We knew the budget my son would have between what we will pay and what max standard loans are ($27,000 total over 4 years before private) and started researching schools nationwide. Very few schools don’t have aggressive packages for high achieving students - Madison just happens to be one of them.
I’m the end, after visiting campus, Madison moved from our sons top school to #3.
Also, there is ZERO reason your student should take on large amounts of debt. Short of very few areas where you go to college makes little difference in your career later on. I went D3 smaller school and am hired by Stanford and Harvard MBA’s to consult all the time 
I’m not talking about tuition reprocity. I’m talking about where your state income taxes can be sent and at what rate.
I don’t see how moving to Wisconsin helps OP. She may not be able to establish residency in time to get in state rates. If her son isn’t accepted then the move was a wasted effort. She’d likely lose residency status for tuition purposes in her current state – even if she could pay the tax rate of current residents – so her son would be OOS everywhere.
I’d tell him your budget and find schools that are affordable. If he’s high stats look for merit too. And make sure he has a couple financial safeties on his list.
It ends up being much more than one year, because it isn’t just moving and earning but doing all that before even applying.
Not going to work.