I'm an incoming Ph.D student in the horribly wonderful(ly confusing) position of having been accepted to all three of my top choices... and after a month of agonizing over the decision, talking to professors (both at my alma mater and at the universities I've been accepted to), and visiting all three campuses, I'm still stuck on making a decision.
The crux of the matter is this:
School A is the closest thing I can imagine to a perfect research match for me. The research going on there is new and exciting, truly cutting edge; they have all of the latest equipment I would want to use in my experiments; and their theoretical viewpoint matches up with mine, again, almost perfectly. While the research that my POIs and their students are doing at Schools B and C is also interesting, it doesn't excite me in the same way as the research at School A- plus, they're missing some of the equipment I would want to use (School C especially, which sucks since I actually think I like their research more than School B ). Also, School A has made it very clear that they really, really want me to go there.
However... School A (generally, and my POI specifically) doesn't have a good placement record. Right now, my dream job (like most prospective PhD students, I suspect) is a tenure track position in a linguistics department at a big research university- which I'm well aware is really hard to get! However, alumni of Schools B and C get these jobs frequently - whereas very few people at School A do. Part of this may have to do with prestige/reputation - Schools B and C are both public ivies, and the linguistics departments there are traditionally two of the best in the country. But more importantly, I got the feeling that students at these schools were much better prepared for the non-research aspects of professorship (like teaching and mentoring students) than students at School A.
Also, I've heard from both current and former students at School A that advising there can be very touch-and-go, in that there are some good advisors, but also some horrible ones (I've been told my POI is a very nice guy and cares deeply about his students, but doesn't have the most time to devote to each of them individually since he's a bit of a rock star in the field at the moment). Both of my POIs at Schools B and C are very well known for being excellent advisors- and again, this shows in that their students get great jobs.
I'm so confused... (and needed to rant a little)
tl;dr - out of top 3 choices, one is an amazing research match (and pretty much the only place I could do this research), while the other two have great advisors and stellar placement records.