It should come as no surprise that the Badger State is home to the highest concentration of Badgers. According to the UW’s latest data digest, there are 191,034 alumni in Wisconsin. With 490,279 living alumni, that means nearly 40 percent of Badgers have stuck around or returned to live in Wisconsin. Minnesota comes in at a distant second with 30,597 alumni (or 6.2 percent), and California ranks third with 27,887 Badgers (or 5.7 percent). If you’re wondering about first destinations for recent grads, Wisconsin’s stats are even higher. For 2023 grads — the most recent class included in the UW’s Repository of Administrative Data and Reports  — 61 percent claimed Wisconsin residency as of April 2024. If you break it down further, the top three counties that boast the most 2023 grads are Dane (37.5 percent), Waukesha (12.9 percent), and Milwaukee (9.7 percent). Photo by Jeff Miller, University of Wisconsin–Madison.