how much will this hurt?

[surgok]

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3rd year student here possibly interested in plastics. I've done quite a bit to make myself competitive, but coming from a small school, I'm not so confident I'll be able to match. I'm genuinely wondering how much of the school factor will hurt my chances of matching.

School: unranked, many would consider bottom tier
Step 1: 257
Research: 16 pubmed-indexed articles (about 1/2 of them primary), 4-5 pending articles, many posters with 1 international, 1 national conference presentation.
Grades: all honors thus far

My mentor who's a plastic guy at a big name institution thinks it's still a long shot for me with less than 50% match probability.

Thoughts from recently matched?

 

[rongeur]

You seem to have a very strong application except for your school rank. I think you'll match if you interview well. The conventional wisdom about the impossibility of integrated position is several years out of date. The huge number of programs converting from independent to integrated positions has made it less of a bottleneck than it used to be.