<p>Like if they have like 2 or 3 really positive ratings but then you find out that it was too small of a sample size AFTER you took the class?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Yup. Told me the professor I was taking botany with was ‘so amazing’, ‘such a good teacher’, ‘so dedicated’. Instead, I get an elderly Filipino woman who, after 40 years in the US still doesn’t speak English. I’m not someone who’s like ‘you’re in America, speak English’, but it seems if you’ve been here for 40 years and you’re teaching a class, it’s a good idea to know the language of your students.
On a more positive note, RMP didn’t tell me how hot my anthropology teacher was going to be. It was a pleasant surprise.</p>
<p>^That’s not the site’s fault. It gave you a student evaluation of a specific professor, but you happened to not get THAT professor.</p>
<p>I specifically looked up the professor I was going to take the class with. I wouldn’t have wasted the money if I had known I wouldn’t be able to understand her. They also never mentioned that she didn’t use a textbook.</p>
<p>Hasn’t fooled me yet.</p>
<p>I had intro to soc with a professor that had extremely good ratings, but I ended up loathing her. Turned out that she preferred to tell sex and pot jokes in lieu of teaching, which made her very popular but not my kind of professor. </p>
<p>Also, most of my favorite professors in college have had a neutral face rating. They were hard professors, but interesting people and good teachers.</p>
<p>Most of the time, they’re dead on. However, I have had two “tough” professors but it turned out that they were pretty awesome professors. They were hard, but as long as you put in the effort or sought them out for help, they were amazing to work with and incredibly intelligent. </p>
<p>So I take the ratings with a grain of salt and I look at what they say. A lot of good professors will get marked down because <em>gasp</em> they actually expect students to come to class. THE HORROR!</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say it’s very accurate. For instance, I absolutely loved my philosophy class and I thought my professor was great. Most of the reviews on ratemyprofessor said he was a terrible teacher, but I think the people who wrote that stuff weren’t into philosophy anyways. I wouldn’t trust it.</p>
<p>Yes. Here are some reviews to my philospphy professors class which I am taking now…</p>
<p>“Awesome”
“Great professor. Kind of quirky.”
“this is the most interesting class i have EVER taken!” </p>
<p>Now I have him and he is just this depressed and closed-minded guy. He also misses all the time and takes forever to grade things. (Still waiting to get back a test we took two weeks ago.) It is definitely my worst class this semester, although I don’t blame the site or anything. … Just my fellow students. (Who apparently only think a class if great and interesting when it is easy)</p>
<p>Also, my art history professor has awful reviews because his classes are “too hard” even though he is one of the best professors I have had.</p>
<p>a lot of people lie about community college professors because the schools are crowded. crowded schools= hard to get classes. so people will say “omg this professor is soooo bad, gave all Fs, and abuses puppies” just to persuade people not to register for that class.</p>
<p>^They don’t at mine, which I’m happy about. Didn’t know they did that. Rate my professor has been spot on with most.</p>
<p>I have had a GREAT professor who had an overall “green face” rating on ratemyprofessor. Sure, her lectures were kinda dry at times, but were also jam-packed with great discussion points and insights.</p>
<p>Yeah. One had four comments, and they all said he was great.
I find him awful and hard to understand.</p>
<p>When there are tons of comments I tend to find it more accurate.</p>
<p>I’ve also had some really good professors that I think should have been rated higher.</p>
<p>I didn’t use RMP as a huge factor for next semester scheduling.</p>
<p>I think the professors on ratemyprofessor who have good grades tend to be the ones who give out easy A’s and don’t really care about their subject…call me weird but I like a class where I’m not bored and I actually learn something.</p>
<p>oh my goodness… YES~!</p>
<p>I took second semester single variable calculus with this guy that EVERYONE was ranting was AMAZING… I got a B last semester (I actually got 1 B, and 3 A’s on the test, and I assume I got a B/C on final because I ended up with a B) so I assumed that I would do well…</p>
<p>WELL this teacher… SCREWED me over!!! I never gotten one F before I took his class in my life!!! He was the type of teacher that if you got the method right but the answer was wrong he gave you 1/10 points! The worst thing about it was a lot of the time we were rushing because we had ninety minutes to take a 10 page calculus test with more than 5 problems on each page! So a lot of the mistakes were because I had 20 minutes to finish five pages! I tried so hard for that F that I got D’s on my other two class’s test (biology for bio majors and physics). </p>
<p>I ended up dropping the class and it screwed over my admission to UCD!!! Luckily I was able to pull up my physics and biology grades, but I knew I could not have if I stayed in that stupid class. Not the end of the world… but I have an eternal hatred for him!!</p>
<p>Of the two best instructors I ever had, one has a 5.0 (7 reviews) and the other has only a 3.3 (50+ reviews). I think they were each top quality instructors and don’t understand why one would have such low ratings.</p>
<p>Of the three worst instructors (can’t decide which of them is the worst) one has a 3.0 (10+ reviews), another a 2.4 (50+ reviews), and one isn’t on ratemyprofessors. None of them deserves more than a 1, however looking through the reviews for the one who has a 2.4, they have only very poor reviews for the course I had them for. Maybe they are better for their other courses. </p>
<p>In general I think it is accurate though. Typically instructors with low ratings are bad, and instructors with high ratings are good. However it’s not great to compare directly. Someone with a 3.5 can easily be better than someone with a 4.0.</p>
<p>RateMyProfessor has fooled me on several occasions and classes that I thought would be easy As turned into my lowest grades.</p>
<p>Use it for a general feeling of the professor but not as a conclusive benchmark.</p>
<p>Yep. It told me that the professor I chose for Intermediate Algebra (as a repeat since I failed it the first time around) was excellent, but turns out he wasted the first hour and a half having us laugh at and correct math tutors’ mistakes everyday. The real lessons didn’t even begin until the last 30 minutes of class.</p>
<p>Yes, I realize they were third years and I took a first year class with the prof. The prof was sleeping half the time…</p>
<p>This is why you also check their grade distribution</p>
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<p>Same. It seems the majority of my highest grades were in classes that profs got the lowest ratings. Maybe I felt the need to try harder in those classes?</p>