Wisconsin, known as “The Badger State” offers charming small towns, thriving cities, great outdoor recreation and warm communities. Wisconsin also has great jobs, educational opportunities and affordable housing. With 15,000 inland lakes, more than 33,000 miles of rivers and streams, two Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, fishing and boating, opportunities in Wisconsin are virtually limitless.
      Wisconsin's self-promotion as “America's Dairyland,” sometimes leads to a mistaken impression that it is an exclusively rural state. In fact, however, Wisconsin contains cities and towns of all sizes. Milwaukee is slightly larger than Boston and part of a largely developed string of cities that stretches down the western edge of Lake Michigan into greater Chicago and also into northwestern Indiana. This string of cities along the western edge of Lake Michigan is generally considered to be an example of a megalopolis. Madison's triple identity as state capital, university town and working city gives it a cultural richness unusual in a city its size. Medium-size cities also dot the state and anchor a network of working farms surrounding them.
      Wisconsin has excellent grade schools and high schools. In fact, among states in which the ACT is the predominant college admission test, Wisconsin has received the top score in the nation for the past ten years. Wisconsin is served by the public University of Wisconsin System consisting of 15 institutions.


Notable private colleges and universities include Marquette University and Lawrence University, among others. The Wisconsin Technical College System is comprised of 16 two-year colleges that offer associate's degrees and career training. The University of Wisconsin, in Madison, is one of the world’s leading centers for the research and development of biotechnology.
      With its location between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, Wisconsin is home to a wide variety of geographical features.

The state is divided into five distinct regions. In the north, the Lake Superior Lowland occupies a belt of land along Lake Superior.
      Just to the south, the Northern Highland includes the state's highest point, Timms Hill, as well as massive forests and thousands of small glacial lakes. In the middle of the state, the Central Plain possesses some unique sandstone formations like the Dells of the Wisconsin River in addition to rich farmland. The Eastern Ridges and Lowlands region in the southeast is home to many of Wisconsin's largest cities. In the southwest, the Western Upland is a rugged landscape with a mix of forest and farmland.
      The varied landscape of Wisconsin makes the state a vacation destination popular for summer and winter outdoor recreation. The distinctive Door Peninsula, which extends off of the eastern coast of the state, contains one of the state's most beautiful tourist destinations, Door County. The area draws thousands of visitors yearly to its quaint villages, seasonal cherry picking and famous fish boils. Festivals such as Summerfest and the EAA Oshkosh Airshow always attract large crowds.
      The state, with a population of 5.5 million, has always been ethnically heterogeneous. Large numbers of Germans arrived between 1850 and 1900, centering in Milwaukee, but also settling in many small cities and farm areas in the southeast. Scandinavians settled in lumbering and farming areas in the northwest. Small colonies of Belgians, Swiss, Finns and other groups came to the state. Irish Catholics mostly came to the cities. After 1900, Polish immigrants came to Milwaukee, followed by African Americans from 1940 on. Currently, 87.3 percent of the population is Caucasian, 5.7 percent African American, 3.6 percent Hispanic, 1.7 percent Asian, 1.2 percent mixed and 0.9 percent Native American.