I have offers/been wait listed for these 3 programs and I'm struggling to decide on an order of preference. My main interest is environmental econ but also public econ more broadly to a lesser extent. I also want to take into account quality of life, not just pure academic performance of the program. My thoughts so far are:
Wisconsin AAE - core courses taught by econ department which is highly ranked, I have been offered 2 years fellowship funding with no RA/TA requirement, and they have a lot of faculty in the environmental field. It limits how far I can move into public econ more generally compared to a straight econ program, plus harsh winters. Looks like a good place to live though overall.
UVA - they have some faculty with similar interests, and seem fairly strong in public econ overall(?). Charlottesville seems like a nice place to live if you're not into big cities (which I'm not particularly). Funding with no TA/RA requirement for the first year is not quite as good as Wisconsin but probably better than Maryland.
UMD - highest ranked econ program overall out of the three, and best academic placement record. I don't know abut funding yet but will likely have TA/RA requirements for all 5 years. Not heard wonderful things about College Park as a campus, and also read that the econ department doesn't treat students as well as other places, so not sure how enjoyable it would be to live and work in that environment for 5 years.
Any feedback on how the Wisconsin AAE program compares to the other two for environmental economics would be particularly helpful, as I've heard conflicting things from different places about this.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.