Funded PhD at low ranked school(s) vs one year funded TA at a top 5 school I'm in a peculiar situation. 

My interest area is human augmentation, biosensing, assistive robotics and human robot interaction. I have offers from 3 different schools in US -


PhD in the School of biology at a top 5 school (R1) - This comes with a one year fixed TA. After that, I will 'hopefully find a lab which can fund me'.
PhD in Bioengineering at a low ranked commuter R1 school - This comes with full funding. The professor is a leader in his field, and most of his students work in academia/research jobs for the government.
PhD with Robotics focus at a low ranked private university (its ranking in Robotics is top 20, but it's still R2, the students end up as postdocs at top 5 schools and work in a cluster of Robotics companies surrounding the school) - This comes with full funding. The assistant professor is new, but very energetic and has secured prestigious grants and industry collaborations. 


I am confused af. 

While I do want the perks of being in a top 5, I don't want to deal with fears about funding running out in my late 20s (dealt with it during my masters). I am an international student from India, coming from a humble background, currently working on my OPT - and really want to do a PhD because I've realized that I thrive in a research environment. My master's was from a top 5 (actually from the first school that I stated). I'm open to both academia and research based industry jobs after the completion of my PhD program.

I have a very good feeling about the third option, since the professor is new, understands the plight of being a PhD candidate, will work with me on securing internships and basically help me build my career. Since he's an assistant professor, I'll be involved with a lot of projects, patents and publications.

The professor at the mid-level R-1 is a stud. He has a well established lab, and is happy with his internal and external collaborators. I'm not sure if he'll work very actively on career development. 

The professor/department at the top university recently had a big grant pulled from them. Even during the interviews, the professors said that they'd love to hire me, but funding is a major issue.
There are so many confounding factors in these sorts of decisions, that it really has to come down to you to decide.

That said, my opinion is you always go with the funding.

Not only for the obvious benefits of having money.  The main benefit as I see it is the school's signal of interest in you, and desire to have you in their program.  Irrespective of what you think is the best fit, these schools see a lot of students, and also have their own opinion on what students are good for their program.  Your two offers with full funding looked at you and said "we want this person," and then put money on the table.

By that metric, the first school has a much more luke warm response.  Presumably they fully funded some other students, but decided against extending full funding to you.  The "why" of it is immaterial at this point.

That leaves just your 2nd and 3rd options.  It sounds like number 3 is an excellent fit that you're excited about, from what you've written.  Regardless of what you pick, congratulations on having multiple offers to pick from though!  This is a good problem to be struggling with.