<p>Here's the link:</p>
<p>Just throwing this out there: [url=<a href=“http://www.coursebubble.com%5DCourseBubble%5B/url”>http://www.coursebubble.com]CourseBubble[/url</a>] has a nicer interface than ExploreCourses.</p>
<p>Wow, this is the first time I’m hearing of CourseBubble.</p>
<p>I’m sticking to courserank in coordination with Explore Courses.</p>
<p>You should be very wary of courserank. I used it my first quarter thinking, “this class should be easy, that’s what courserank says,” and it was dead wrong. The class was hard as hell, for me and for everyone else. In the years since, I’ve found that few people actually trust courserank, because it has tons of poor advice (from students who are absurdly focused and do better than 90% of the class).</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’ve used courserank and it’s never done me wrong. It’s always worth checking with upperclassmen and using the shopping period to your advantage. Then again, I’m one of those students phantasmagoric mentions (just read Cal Newport and you will be, too).</p>
<p>Oh wow. Well thanks for the advice haha. I’ll stay wary.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was “one of those students” too. We all were. ;)</p>
<p>FWIW I think courserank can be useful, but you never know when it will give you bad advice. Once you’re done with freshman year, you can always listen to what your friends say about certain classes, but if you check courserank for the heck of it you’ll find some really off comments. Sometimes courserank is wrong just because the professor has changed. One class I took had comments like “not hard” and “you’ll ace it,” which probably was true with the prof they had, but that year the prof changed; each problem set took 10+ hours to do, even when we formed study groups and went to office hours to get it done.</p>
<p>I go by Courserank reviews when there are multiple reviews. If there aren’t, I usually post a question, and the answer is helpful. And as Phantasmagoric says, the reviews are only viable for the same professors; different professor, different course.</p>
<p>Courserank has helped me a ton. I’ve found some hidden gems because of it, and have had great success estimating my workloads for each quarter. To be fair, I probably am more of the applicannot-type student. </p>
<p>With upper level classes, there are less and less reviews, which is tough. That’s when you gotta find other reviews of the professor (explore courses helps with this), ask questions, or just go out on a limb and attend the class.</p>
<p>I think you can look at previous student reviews from the course evaluations that students have to fill out at the end of each class. Just go on Axess and poke around (I can’t remember where the link was). Those can provide some good insight into the professors and the class difficulty.</p>
<p>^When you log into axess, look at quick links. click “course/section evaluations”, then on the next page click “view past evaluation results” or something like that. Browse away. I’ve only been able to see the average ratings (for many categories) and frequency of each rating. </p>
<p>Can you see more? As of now it’s mildly helpful. It’s hard to interpret a few of the categories. For instance, does a poor on difficulty mean the course was too easy or too hard? </p>
<p>That said, it is interesting to see how students rate courses on Axess versus Courserank. My IHUMs, for instance, got significantly better reviews on Axess than Courserank. I have a hunch that on Courserank students are tempted to over-exaggerate their attitudes toward a class, at least for those who disliked the class. Who knows though?</p>