<p>Most of my professors were rated very negatively (I don't get to set my own first year schedule). One of my professors received 100% negative reviews. 20/20 random students on the internet claim that I will learn close to nothing in this professor's class.</p>
<p>So in your experience how accurate is this website?</p>
<p>its very accurate. if they have the same trend for quite some time, then Id trust it. Me personally, I wish I had trusted it more so that I could avoid some of these teachers I have now who are horrendous.</p>
<p>Usually if 20 people are saying that a professor is bad then its in general true. Of course the argument can be made that it could just be 20 posts by the same person, but it makes no sense for one person to just post the same thing over and over about the professor over a period of a few years. But make sure you READ the comments, noting their grammar and the language they use since that can be the difference between a true review or someone going on a rant.</p>
<p>For the professors I’ve had at community college while in high school, it’s been fairly accurate. I can usually tell if the people who made the reviews were coming from lazy students who were just bitter.</p>
<p>I find it’s usually pretty accurate, but you need to look at some of the less subjective stuff in the comments-- I look for key phrases, like “take home exam” or “lectures straight from reading,” or “doesn’t respond to emails,” rather than “god this man sucks,” you know?</p>
<p>I generally avoid taking professors who don’t sound like they align very well with my needs based on RMP if there are a significant number of comments that concern me.</p>
<p>If 1 out of 1 says bad things about the professor, you don’t really know. If 20 out of 20 say bad things about the professor, the professor sucks.</p>
<p>I usually disregard comments which are typed in all caps, all lower case with no commas or periods, or ones with excessive exclamation marks. Also if you see 8 reviews in a row which all have exactly the same rating, all written on the same day, you can probably assume that 1 person wrote all of them.</p>
<p>I also look for reasons why the professor suck or reasons why the professor is awesome, as Emaheevul07 said. Those are the most important.</p>
<p>Further, I might not want a professor who has always taught 1 class for 4 years, and is now signed up to teach a different one. Watch out for what classes the professor has been teaching.</p>
<p>its semi true. I mean I’ve had teachers on their that got horrible reviews but I thought they did a fine job and the class wasn’t too hard. IMO, you would be stupid to not use ratemyprofessor.com bc it really can make your life easier when picking teachers.</p>
<p>u have take into account i think that most peoples’ experience that post on there was probably one of the extremes, so mostly ****ed off students venting post there, but i if theres a lot of bad ones its prob right. i would def use it in picking professors. me and my friends have mostly used it to look at our friends parents reviews or teachers who used to teach college reviews cuz they can be kinda friendly. a lot of reviews for my friends dad said he was obsessed with sex, which was funny cuz his family is very conservative.</p>
<p>Well this sucks. Every review (they span the length of 6 years) says that he’s old and senile and literally has nothing to offer but a good laugh at how lost he is. Bahaha. This is an 8 eight hour studio class. Oh boy. :x My other professors didn’t get awesome reviews, either. My school schedules in sections and I’m preregistered for my studio classes. Anybody have experience in switching between two blocks?</p>
<p>ha i had a semi-senile teacher senior of high school. he was a pretty bad teacger anyways though, his methods didnt make sense. the funny thing was before he taught at my high school he taught secondary education at some college in alaska, i bet his students became good teacher ha.</p>
<p>i was kinda disappointed cuz only one of professors was on the website. she wasnt supposed to be easy but people seemed to like her a lot</p>
<p>Generally, I find those reviews completely true. Only once have I disagreed with them: my chemistry professor had about 25/30 bad reviews, and she’s still one of my favorite professors from college. I learned way more from her than I did from the “mostly-good” professor I had the next semester.</p>
<p>Based off my experience, it has been completely true so far. I’m glad in some cases I listened to it while in other cases I wish I had listened more to it.</p>
<p>I have found that a majority of the people who post on their are the lower half percentile of the class in performance. They posts about their bitter remarks. It seems that the views are in the extremes, but shewed towards the bad extremes.</p>
<p>^i second that.</p>
<p>I noticed that a lot of the bad reviews are just from kids who didn’t do well in the class and justify it by blaming it on the teacher. When it comes down to it, how much of a bad grade is your fault and how much of it is the teacher’s fault? These kids also don’t realize that college professors don’t like answering stupid questions and prefer you to search for the answer yourself before asking them.</p>
<p>Take those reviews with a grain of salt and if its a class you really want to take or need, then ignore them but if its a class that you are taking just because you are somewhat interested and you don’t really it go ahead and take the ratings’ advice.</p>
<p>Generally, the ratings are pretty true. You can usually disregard those who are obviously at a different level in a subject. Examples:</p>
<p>1.) “the proffessor sucks! he didnt even let us use are notes for the tests like the last proffessor i had for a class like this!!”</p>
<p>2.) “While most of the students in the class were complaining that certain parts of advanced calculus were ‘too hard’ for them (ha!), Professor ______ bravely pushed through, for those of us who are actually intelligent.”</p>
<p>Number 1 tells me pretty much nothing, except that you can’t use notes on tests, and number 2 seems to actually reveal negative characteristics of the professor. Grammar/spelling in the first and a superiority complex in the second both show that the comment should be discounted. If there are 20 comments, you should be able to get a good feel for how the professor is. Also, note what class each is for. Some professors get terrible reviews for English II, but great reviews for English I. Occasionally, the majority is wrong. Like how my philosophy professor was called a communist, because a bunch of students were mad that he taught about Marx and said the Soviet Union wasn’t following the ideals of Marx. However, I would usually trust it (I wouldn’t not take someone based on “communist”, anyway).</p>
<p>Please take the ratings on Rate My Professor with a grain of salt. </p>
<p>I am a professor. Last fall I had a student come to my office hours asking how she could do better (and perhaps pass) my class. I told her to read the book before class and then ask questions if she didn’t understand the material. I told her to pay special attention to the questions and problems at the end of each chapter since between 10 and 25% of each exam comes straight from those questions. </p>
<p>She told me that I never use the book. I told her that I have been teaching this same course for 30+ semesters, and I always take the same percentage of questions straight from the text. I use the questions from the book as an incentive and reward for students who use the materials available to them. </p>
<p>She repeated to me that she has it on good authority that I never use the text, so she never even purchased it. Finally, I got her to tell me that Rate My Professor has several reviews that say I never use the text. I am guessing that the students who wrote the reviews never, ever figured it out and did poorly enough to rant and blast the course and my teaching.</p>
<p>This student never did improve, because she was convinced that I was lying and that Rate My Professor was true. Guess what!?! I always do use the book. Oh well!</p>
<p>In my experience when the post describes the personality of the professor (boring, can’t communicate, helpful and active, ect.) they tend to be true but I tend to disagree about the difficulty ratings. I remember reading that my Differential Equations professor, was really hard and the tests were tough but at the end of the class I ended up with a 98% overall. Same thing happened with my gen chem professor. Like mentioned many of the ratings are done by disgruntled students.</p>
<p>
This often is the case. Therefore, I try to rate every professor I have ever had (after 16 classes, all 13 professors have been good, partially thanks to recommendations, as well as RMP), to provide genuine information. I think everyone should do the same.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the best people to ask are upperclassmen in your desired field of study who have had the teacher.</p>
<p>I think bitter students are more likely to go on a website and complain and advise against past professors than satisfied students are to compliment and recommend.</p>
<p>I dunno, I make it a point to review everyone I take at the end of the semester, since I know I read their reviews before I took them and someone will be looking. I would imagine I am not alone.</p>