<p>Can any information be extrapolated from an overall rating of a school on "Rate My Professor"? For instance, I've looked at schools whose overall ratings are in the high 2s to the high 3s. Yesterday I found a school whose overall rating was 2.33. That seemed ver low for a school. Can any conclusions be drawn from that or is it still best to go department by department and professor by professor when looking at ratings?</p>
<p>Students consistently rate professors based on the grade they think the prof will give in the course. I would guess that consistently high scores mean grade inflation.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about that. Look up Harvey Mudd vs. MIT. I don’t think Mudd has grade inflation. Of course, Harvey Mudd has way fewer professors than MIT so that skews results.</p>
<p>Rankings from retired faculty, dead faculty, faculty who move to other schools, etc. are still included in the overall ranking… meaning you probably shouldn’t rely on school or departmental numbers. IMO the best approach is to ignore the numbers and read comments about individual profs.</p>
<p>^
agree. The comments are often very accurate. And you can get a sense of who is writing them and why. The slacker student who bashes a prof for being hard usually tips his hand and you can sense the motivation in the comment.</p>
<p>The rating system is biased in the sense that an easier class -> higher score. </p>
<p>Also remember that the kind of students who leave reviews tend to be in the “extremes.” </p>
<p>Many schools have an “internal rating system” of sorts that current students can access. Sometimes the school’s rating system is more up to date than rate my professors.</p>
<p>School-wide averages might also capture the academic atmosphere rather than the actual ‘quality’ of instruction. Here’s a similar example: Bryn Mawr’s dining services are consistently ranked very highly, yet our food sucks compared to the dining halls at any other college I have ever eaten at. Why are we ranked so high? Because students think that what we are getting great food (compared to college standards) and hence we report on surveys that we are extremely happy with our food.</p>
<p>The statistics on RMP are unusable as anything other than anecdotal evidence for a variety of reasons. Most likely, you will just use this website to validate your previous concerns.</p>
<p>college_ruled,</p>
<p>What would account for two schools, equally known for rigorous classes and no grade deflation, having such a variance in overall rating? I’m specifically referring to MIT at 2.33 and Harvey Mudd at 3.75.</p>
<p>I think it just depends on the situation. My school is listed as 3.3. I looked up a few of my old prof’s on there… certain ones that are tough and don’t grade inflate at all have scores of like 1.9, and certain prof’s that are absolutely wonderful have scores like 4.4. It really just depends on the type of profs they employee and how their grading system is.</p>