Does title of LOR writer matter?

[and 99 others]

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I want one of my letters to be from a humanities professor who knows me well and likes me a great deal. However, she is just a PhD student. She did teach the entire course, though, and I have connected with her outside of class through one of my ECs.

Would it be better to omit this letter for a different humanities professor who is more established, also thinks highly of me, but probably can't speak as personally about me?

 

[esob]

All other things being equal? Yes; however, all other things rarely are equal.

If you can get a homerun letter from your dept chair who is a tenured PhD vs the same letter from "lecturer" who only teaches one or two classes and has a masters, then yes, it will matter. How much, is subjective. I think the general advice is that it varies with your institution but if you are at a big school, I would aim for all of my letters to come from those with terminal degrees, and ideally a prof that is tenured.

It won't kill your application if one of your letters isn't, but if it comes down to offering a seat to someone with the same stats who managed to get great letters from "better" letter writers, then some would say that the seat would go to that person instead of you. Generally, the higher up the food chain someone is, the more limited their time is and thus if you can manage to convince them to carve out a slice of their time for you, then it shows that they found something about you compelling enough to choose to invest their time in your future.

 

[and 99 others]

All other things being equal? Yes; however, all other things rarely are equal.

If you can get a homerun letter from your dept chair who is a tenured PhD vs the same letter from "lecturer" who only teaches one or two classes and has a masters, then yes, it will matter. How much, is subjective. I think the general advice is that it varies with your institution but if you are at a big school, I would aim for all of my letters to come from those with terminal degrees, and ideally a prof that is tenured.

It won't kill your application if one of your letters isn't, but if it comes down to offering a seat to someone with the same stats who managed to get great letters from "better" letter writers, then some would say that the seat would go to that person instead of you. Generally, the higher up the food chain someone is, the more limited their time is and thus if you can manage to convince them to carve out a slice of their time for you, then it shows that they found something about you compelling enough to choose to invest their time in your future.

What if I have one of those letters from a dept head (that may not necessarily be as strong in content) in addition to the one by the PhD student who knows me more intimately? Or would the latter still not be worth including if I have the former? I am aiming for very competitive schools and I want to make sure everything is optimized as much as possible.

 

[esob]

What if I have one of those letters from a dept head (that may not necessarily be as strong in content) in addition to the one by the PhD student who knows me more intimately? Or would the latter still not be worth including if I have the former? I am aiming for very competitive schools and I want to make sure everything is optimized as much as possible.

There is, of course, some area of subjectivity to any part of the medical school process, but my two cents is that I had a very good mentor through my application cycle who served as an adcom member of a couple different high profile med schools and they strongly suggested that I aim for terminal degree letter writers if available. If the "PhD student" is actually just a TA (as opposed to someone who has a masters and is a guest lecturer), then I would suggest that no, you don't have a TA write you a letter, particularly if you are aiming for competitive schools and are looking to edge out applicants that will also be rockstars on paper already.