Rochester is actually a premier program, it rates up there with the best of them in the country, honestly. The other upstate programs don't even come close to touching it. It's the only one with a simulator, best childrens hospital, overall a great place with great residents and strong didactics. Strong Memorial is quite highly regarded as a wonderful place in the academic medicine community.
Albany is probably next best. Combined 4 year program. Decent caseload, probably good didactics but hard to tell from an interview day. Residents were a large percentage of FMG's.
Syracuse is interesting. University hospital, but it's small (300 or so beds). They don't do OB or major peds, so you go away for those as mentioned previously. Two things here, one they will be finishing a full children's hospital in 2006. That's a great plus for this program. Two, you can rotate through the nearby (connected I believe to University hospital) private hospital for OB during your elective time. Now realize that as an attending you will be doing lots of epidurals most likely. Most programs you have much more exposure to OB and when on call cover OB a lot more than you will here. There are no CRNA's here at all. None. That means that if there's a heavy night caseload, you're there. They have a big "backup" call thing, 1st thru like 7th. I got the impression that residents here work pretty hard. Again, a lot of FMG's in this program. I see this program as getting better and once they have a children's hospital, if they can fix OB it will be much better.
Buffalo I cancelled my interview after I heard they didn't show you the hospital.