Before you select a class, be sure to look up your professors ratings.
There are multiple websites that provide this information.
Explanation:
In this first semester at UCF, we have seen the following – all in UCF Chemistry classes:
One friend who withdrew (meaning he paid in full for the class but got no credit, and no refund) because he could not understand one word the prof spoke.
One friend who tried to tough it out despite being unable to understand the prof at all – and will probably get an F…no better than a D.
Both of the above students have dealt with languages and accents all their lives, and are very accustomed to dealing with communications difficulties. Neither professor can communicate at a 3rd grade level in English.
A third friend – a HS valedictorian and National Merit Scholarship finalist – who had such understanding problems with the prof that he will probably get no better than a C in the course.
This is a third, different professor – NOT the same as the other two. This student from another state will probably lose his scholarship…and will not return to UCF as a result.
All three are first-semester freshmen taking CHM 2040 or 2041.
ALL THREE OF THESE PROFESSORS are rated less than 2.0 out of 5.0 on a reputable ratings site.
@JimDadinmia This definitely concerns me as a parent. I also read the reddit sites for the schools my S21 is considering. It is very scary to see what the students are saying about the way Co-vid is being handled by the schools and many of the professors.
@2plustrio agreed that not all sites are honest, however it should definitely raise some flags. If you read something questionable you should look into it more. There are definitely many great professors that get bad raps.
I look at all rating sites the same way. You need to read between the lines and look into the details of the complaints and praises. There are also sites that it seems obvious the reviews are part of a class assignment or extra credit. The probability of 10 students deciding to write glowing reviews of a college on the same date has to be very low.
Honestly the schools should visit these sites a bit to see how they are being perceived by students and parents. Student and staff moral is extremely important to thrive in education.
This is great advice but to go even further and to take what @1intwo2go says, I would absolutely research some of the professors at the schools your students are applying to, especially how they’re doing during covid, even if Fall may be more normal and in person. Why? Because this tells you how they may deal with other issues and how the school handles it.
I have one kid who’s classes are all remote but thank god they’re all synchronous, have office hours (online) and readily available. Others at her large public school have not had the same experience and have mentioned that their kids have had courses that are 100% asynchronous and then the professor just gives a test and that’s it. It’s awful and no instruction. The professors are too lazy to do the work, show a video only or whatever. Not even recorded lectures of their own. My other daughter actually took an E&M Physics this way last summer at UW-Milwaukee. It was her first experience like that and fortunately because she had that class in high school it helped. But for students that didn’t they were having trouble since you had no interaction with the Professor and no one to explain things to you.
In non Covid, we also know there are plenty of bad professors at all schools. Parents and students should research that as well. It might be great that your student can get a free ride at a lower level school, but take note of the quality of the teaching and professors as it may not be as great as a school one notch up where you may still get a lot of merit money but not quite the full ride.
Reddit can be helpful and a lot of professors are even on that. But it is also often a bitching site for students, so take it with a grain of salt. Rate my Professor can be helpful to some degree, but there are also other sites but most importantly, talking to students from those schools. It is not hard to find students at the colleges your kids are looking for on insta, reddit, fb, etc.
These sound like extreme cases perhaps, or students that maybe should have dropped the course when they had the chance and taken it another semester. They can’t be the only ones in this boat and there is no way everyone is earning a C in the course. There are also many resources available at schools to help with these kinds of things, including TA’s.
My daughter’s school, the Chemistry class is brutal. Fortunately she knew that ahead of time and focused all her attention on the AP test to earn a 5 to get out of it. But her friends that took it died in the class, even though the professor was good, it is known as a weed out class. Plenty get C’s. These are kids who have never earned a B a day in their life. They just have to be prepared that college is a different beast and move ahead as bad as that is.
That’s a valid point, of course – and it’s true of ALL ratings. Any time we look at any kind of rating, we have to do so with common-sense skepticism and the realization that some glowing ratings could be shills and some horrible ratings could be nonsense or worse.
Regardless of what kind of ratings I’m looking at, I don’t look at ONE rating in a vacuum. I consider the body of ratings, and especially the comments. A rating with no explanation is pretty useless. And comments like “Best prof EVER,” or “Worst prof EVER” are equally worthless.
The ratings I pay attention to are those which give explanations of the problems encountered – and even then I always ask myself, “Okay, this rater didn’t like XYZ…but would that bother ME?”
I also look at the number of ratings. If a prof has 117 ratings and a decent average, you can be pretty confident they’re good. If they have only 4 ratings, two of which have no comments and one of which is “worst ever,” obviously you can’t put much stock in that. You can’t just look at a number, you have to think and you have to do some qualitative assessment.
In the cases I cited, all of those profs had at least 30-40 ratings, and all of them had a number of negative comments which were about the same issues. If one kid can’t understand somebody’s accent, that is one situation. But when you have 50 ratings and 15-20 comments saying the prof doesn’t speak English…there’s a problem there.
Honestly I think this is good advice for students at any school. Many universities have their own internal ratings for professors which my D finds very helpful. Her experience has been that the ratings are typically very accurate. Students don’t typically tend to trash professors for no reason and there is a different between “this prof is super tough” and “couldn’t understand a single word” type ratings.
In my program, the students who complain the loudest and the most are honestly the laziest students out of the group. I sometimes wish students could be rated.
Anyways, as others have said, do review ratings but also take them with a grain of salt. Students can be so different with learning styles and personality conflicts as well.
In the end, take the courses that you want/need to take that work with your schedule. If there are negative reviews, read through those and be prepared. Reach out to previous students for tips for success.
And if you have an instructor who truly is bad (I’ve had them myself), please take any objective evidence and concerns to the department head of your college. Complete the colleges course/professor evaluations at the end of each semester (so many students do not do this). Approaching this internally at the college is much more effective than social media or online rating sites.
It’s so interesting this whole thing just came up especially in talking about Rate my professor and legitimate ratings etc. one of my daughters is in a highly regarded honors program. She is in a class that she can’t stand. The professor all semester has given assignments due around 5pm on Fridays, which is a day they don’t have class and basically assumes no one in the course has anything else they’re doing on Fridays either. It was by far my daughter’s least favorite class and her one complaint about the Professor was always how picky she was and how peer things were graded. My daughter appealed her first one because there was a huge discrepancy between the two peer graders grades, the TA didn’t provide any comments event though they were told there would be comments, and the lower peer grader didn’t follow (or read the rubric correctly) in seeing what was allowed to be done which is why they took points off. Anyway she appealed and didn’t get it back for over two weeks. In the interim another assignment was due and only after that one was turned in was something additional explained about the grading rubric so my daughter would’ve have a clearer understanding of what she missed on the first one if they didn’t wait so long to grade her appeal. Anyway when she got it back, the response was so snarky. It was basically, yeah you’re right but we could’ve taken off for this instead but we decided not to and we’re leaving your grade the same. She was so annoyed.
She wound up doing decent on later assignments because she knew the key was in reading the rubric etc. Others not so much so. Well they had a huge group presentation due this past Monday. Yep right after Thanksgiving. Then yesterday she bashes the class telling them the avg was a B and they’ll get the grades ag night. So…that must have been it. Because about 10 students went and literally ripped her a new one on RMP. There was one post from October and then a lot of prior year posts all similar. Treats you like a 13 year old yada yada. My daughter said she felt bad because it was rather harsh about the professor but everything about the course itself was true. Lots of busywork. Non empathetic professor. Etc.
So yeah while you need to take these with a grain of salt. The gist is generally true.
Oh and the avg grade on the final project was an A- not a B so that was even more bizarre that she told her class that.
Best place to learn about professors is really to ask around and also Reddit is actually a good resource better than RMP usually.
Sorry for the long winded post. I thought it ironic considering I commented initially.
We are big believers in RMP as well as taking the prof, not the course. It has served my DD and my numerous mentees well over the years. RMP is not perfect, but if you read the reviews with a critical eye, you will avoid the real duds and be prepared for the tough, but fair professors. No course is worth taking of the prof is terrible.
