While departmental rankings should be taken with a grain of salt, Michigan and UW both have highly ranked Econ departments on several ranking sites, so you can be confident that both are excellent choices. If UW is cheaper than Michigan as an OOS student, then take that offer and run with it! Ann Arbor and Madison are both great college town, slightly different, in that Ann Arbor is a smaller city whereas Madison is the state capital. Both have huge Big 10 sports scenes, great food. UW’s campus offers a lot of flexibility for students looking for different types of experiences – you can live in high rise dorms with a bustling urban feel, in the southeast campus neighborhood, or live in a bucolic dorm near the Lake, surrounded by running paths and nature, in the Lakeshore housing area. In terms of travel, you can fly into Chicago and take the Van Galder Bus from O’hare to campus vs. fly to Detroit for Ann Arbor. Both schools will have plenty of east coast students. In terms of weather, yes, Wisconsin is colder, longer, than Boston area. But it’s not Alaska or even Minnesota. For someone coming from the east coast, UCLA, as more expensive and longer travel, seems an easy one to pull from the list. Same for Babson, which has a different undergrad focus.