<p>Professors get high ratings for being the jocular and physically attractive professor who is a lienient grader who gives almost no homework. Many of the students who rate the professors are not interested in the learning the subject and are only looking for an effortless grade and would vote down professors for that reason. People who are actually interested in intellectual pursuits would not mind a monotone professor who is somewhat difficult as long as they are interested in the subject and the professor teaches it well. I've had several professors with a rating of 2 (out of 5) that I absolutely loved, while I've had several professors with a rating of a 4 (out of 5) that I did not like very much. Also, students are not limited in how many times they rate their professor, meaning the ratings can be unfairly weighted.</p>
<p>My suggestion to people is to ignore the ratings and read the reviews. The rating average includes short and non-descriptive reviews such as "THIS PROFESOR SUX!!" and "MR SMITH IS THE MANN!!!". I don't include those reviews in my assessments.</p>
<p>But just as unintelligent as it is to blindly swallow the reviews and ratings on the website, it is equally closed-minded to reject it altogether and pick your professor without knowing anything about them. Like everything in life, ratemyprofessors.com should not be automatically accepted or instantly rejected, but should be analyzed deeply to achieve an optimal result.</p>
<p>^I agree with everything you said and I’ve made similar posts on here about ratemyprofessors.com bringing up the same points. Another thing to think about is how many actual ratings their are. If a professors has taught hundreds of students and there are only 10 rankings, that isn’t a very good sample size. It could just be the 10 kids who were upset that the class wasn’t totally easy and never studied. The general rule I use is that if a lot of students are saying the same thing, it’s generally true, and if not, then its inconclusive.</p>
<p>I always pick the easy professors. Why would I want to do extra work for nothing anyways? The point of college is to get the degree, the highest gpa, and collect relevant work experience. </p>
<p>For me I will pretty much learn most of my stuff outside the classroom ( during clubs and work experience), class is just for the basic info that’s usually out of date ( you hardly have to waste your time sitting in class for this).</p>
<p>I agree with cabhax. Why would I take a class with the prof that’s really hard and gives few A’s instead of the one who gives many A’s? Especially if it’s the same class?</p>
<p>Even if he/she is a cool professor, at the end of the day it’s about the grade, imo.</p>
<p>My dad was a college professor. I used to run into people who had him as a prof. Half would say “He was really tough.” The other half would say “He was really great.” </p>
<p>I came to realize that the way they described him had more to do with their own attitude than it had to do with his teaching.</p>
<p>In fact, our school does course evaluations at the end of each semester. I think it’s a big benefit to publish some of these results. That way, people wouldn’t have to rely upon friends to know what a course is really like. It’ll be like amazon.com customer reviews, with a couple of 5/5s at the top, and a couple of 2/5s towards the bottom. anybody feel me?</p>
<p>Many years ago, when I was in college, a volunteer student group was given access to all of the student course evaluations for the university. We published a book each year that tabulated the numeric results and summarized the written comments.</p>
<p>I find RMP really helpful. I see people say similar things like that…
“this prof. sucks! Made us write 2 papers! and he is a grammar nazi!!! Do.Not.Take” and then I see a mixture of those similar comments bundled w/ comments saying, “I learned a lot in his class. The course is tough but he helps his students…”
I always try to read every single comment before deciding to take a class by a certain professors. Most of the ones that give low ratings at the Community College I attend are complaining b/c the professor makes you earn the grade and doesn’t just hand them out. </p>
<p>If more than a handful say, “easy A and you don’t have to show up!” I usually don’t register for that class w/ that professor.</p>
<p>my school has a built in rating system where there are different criteria to rate on, with genuine no-bs comments since those are filtered out. more schools should do this… if you have a school based evaluation system, it helps both students and professors</p>
<p>I take RMP with a grain of salt. If 100 students state that the prof is good, then it has to be some truth to it. But if 3 or 4 people are commenting about his hair, her curves or how terribly easy is their class, then it is not as objective, and I ignore it. In my junior yr in college I care that I get some good teaching from the professor, I learn something.</p>
<p>RMP is effective for gen ed. classes IMO… For example, I’m a business major trying to fill my science requirement. There is no reason for me to want to be challenged in course unrelated to my major. If I can get the A and learn the basics, thats what really matters in a course like this. </p>
<p>Continuing with my example, in a business course, taking the easy road is not the answer of course. That being said, not all easy teachers are bad. Some of the best professors I’ve had never assigned HW. In fact, the class most beneficial to me so far in college had almost no HW, but the professor was amazing and had us do things we may do in the real world instead of worthless busy work.</p>
6 years later, lo and behold. RMP is a tool and should be used as a tool. Just because some student out there is using it blindly, doesn’t mean it’s a bad tool. If you only consider the intelligent reviews, you should be fine.
One thing I’ve noted is that professors in the 3-range tend to be good. They tend to be the professors that the serious students appreciate, but the lazy students hate. Getting all 4.5/5 professors that give easy A’s are nice but sometimes you need to be challenged.
Rate my Professor is a useful tool, but not always the best. There is such thing as a survey bias, people are more likely to leave a review if they had a bad experience vs a good/neutral one- the same thing is true for hotels/businesses/Amazon products.
There is also often a lack of sufficient data. Some of it may be because the profs are new/don’t teach frequently/etc but it’s hard to make a good judgement based on a small handful of reviews.
All things considered RMP is not perfect, but it’s still a good thing and a useful tool. The best information is a personal account from a trusted source, but sometimes that isn’t an option.
I was in college before the internet, much less ratemyprofessor. Sure, there was word of mouth but some prof’s were unavoidable. I still remember the most obnoxious and difficult professor I had in college (ECON). I still remember things he taught me.
Since there is not an inverse correlation between getting a higher grade and learning, on the whole, it is better to chose a medum difficulty professor than a high difficulty professor. In an easy class, you can still take the time to learn the many details of the subject, but in a hard class, the professor isn’t going to give an A+ to a student who tests at a B- just because they understood the subject so profoundly well.
RMP is good if used for its qualitative information, and not for its rating. It’s not an accurate sample to weigh all grades equally, but you can learn about the class from the reviews. Do the students think the professor is clear in what they demand from the assignments? Does the professor have a thick accent? Does the professor encourage participation or does it lean toward the classic lecture-test model?