Undergrad - Syracuse, Maryland and Ohio State - Best all around??

Wow are these totally different schools. I didn't go to any of them but grew up in Upstate, NY near Syracuse and lived in the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia) area for a bit post-grad. My view of Syracuse is that it is a monied private school for people who are generally well connected but didn't take grades as seriously as they necessarily could have (paying the same for SU as you would for Princeton/Yale/ETC, but having a selectivity of 50% for its biggest school, you're just going to draw those types). It was the Princeton Review top party school a few years ago. And yet it isn't a slimy place. A lot of people there, at least from what I know, are well connected and plenty will end up doing the NYC thing and doing cool stuff wherever they end up.

UMD is, in my opinion, just a different institution. There are plenty of people there driving land rovers around, doing cutting edge research, etc doing what people at SU do, but it just isn't completely the same network. Where SU is, in my view, a safe median for many well connected people, UMD is, in my view, the "dream school" for a lot of less well positioned people. It is still a super solid institution, but when you see posters in the DC metro advertising UMD as a "well-known university," you know that a lot of people choosing it are not facing the same choices you are. None of that goes to recruitment stats. Maybe UMD has a killer U-B school and just blows SU out of the water. But something to keep in mind might be the networks. I'll add the disclaimer that SU is the dream school for many less well-positioned people as well. But SU just costs more.

I view OSU as being in the middle of these two schools. It is public, like UMD, and as fun if not more fun than either of them, but is a better brand as far as public schools are concerned. I have friends from solid Upstate, NY HSs that went to OSU (much like you might go to an "out of state" state school such as Michigan, UVA, Chapel Hill, etc), but I know zero people that would do the same for UMD. I don't mean to strike at UMD. There are tons of smart, brilliant, etc cool people there of every shape size and background. I just view it as separate from OSU and SU.

You mention the state schools as being cheaper and I definitely won't argue that point. Whether or not SU is worth the money is a subjective call. The people who, in my view, really seem/seemed to "get the most" out of it or were the people who "knew" SU was for them, are the people willing/able to engage in the greek scene, have fun, and not worry too much about the next step. In my view, those are people who are not worried about money. Going to SU and worrying about money, you're just not going to find as much company IMO.