Apologies if this is the wrong forum to post in, but it looks like the one that best fits my question.
I’m really having trouble deciding if I should take a professor I’m considering.
On one hand she has terrible ratings on Rate My Professor, which in my experience is crazy accurate. Like the reviews say she’s young and inexperienced at teaching and they learned nothing from her.
On the other hand I went to her office and talked to her to try to get a feel for her and the class. I found her extremely friendly and helpful when answering my questions. This class is for my major and she likes the subtopic of the major I’ll be focusing on. She was impressed that I took initiative about the class before it started. I’ve already earned major brownie points with her and I know that tends to pay off. I don’t understand why people don’t like her.
Any advice? The reviews have me pretty worried even though I’m impressed with her after meeting her in her office.
Your personal experience is telling you something different than what you’re reading on social media. You can’t ignore that.
Can you discreetly ask some upperclassmen in the department who are taking her class what they think? See if you can find people who like her and who are doing well in the class.
They may tell you that even though the professor is a great person, her classes are useless and that they’re only doing well in spite of her. That would be a red flag. But maybe they’ll tell you the opposite. Maybe her lectures are so-so but the time spent in office hours are priceless. Your experience would support the idea that she’s great for office hours. Some teachers are just better tutorial professors than lecture professors.
I’d be concerned about the experience part. I currently have a professor who is very kind and knows her stuff, but she’s had some problems with timely grading and keeping on track with the syllabus because this is her first year teaching. It’s perfectly possible for a professor to have problems in other areas while being very helpful and friendly. That said, you have to weigh whether you’d be willing to put up with issues like that in light of the positives of taking the class. I agree with the above in that you should ask around and see if the problems others are having are deal breakers for you.
Just a thought–Rate My Professor is notorious for being pretty misogynistic when it comes to female professors, particularly in STEM fields. In fact, the words you mentioned (young, inexperienced) are some of the negative terms that come up disproportionately for women (whereas male professors are disproportionately “geniuses”–go figure). Not an indictment of you or the site itself (it can be helpful in many cases) but it’s something that’s worth thinking about. I agree with @Otterma, ask some real people, not the faceless internet people on RMP.
Sincerely,
A Faceless Internet Person
There have been many instances where I had a professor who didn’t seem that great in the reviews yet in reality he/she was awesome. I would trust what you have already encountered with her. Take a chance
You will get a skewed sample on ratemyprofessors - like most internet-based review sites, people who respond tend to report a really good or really bad experience. Those in the middle usually aren’t motivated to write a review. That said, you can learn a lot if comments cluster about specific issues “assigns too much reading,” “slow and inconsistent grader,” etc. If the complaints are vague, be they “best teacher ever” or “useless” then I would take them less seriously.
@rougesneakers It’s interesting you mention misogyny. One reviewer gave her a back handed compliment about her looks before giving her a nasty rating, which pissed me off more than it should have. She’s a STEM professor too. Go figure. I wasn’t aware misogyny was a systematic problem on the site though. It explains one of the few other times I had a much better experience than the reviews would suggest. I will try to find others who have taken her. Might be hard since she’s so new to the school.
@blackwidow22 Yeah, that’s what I’m leaning towards. Absent horror stories from people I talk to in person I’ll most likely take her. I have a really good feeling about her and I’m starting to think the reviewers are butthurt because they didn’t put the effort into the class and were graded accordingly.
Timely grading and following the syllabus have little to do with experience. Some of the professors I’ve had who have had the most problems staying on track were veteran teachers. They simply stopped caring about meeting deadlines for turning in grades, giving feedback, or following the syllabus because they had tenure.
RMP is notoriously unreliable. People go on RMP largely to complain - it’s a motivation issue. Can you talk in person to people who you know have actually taken her class (and aren’t hiding behind internet anonymity)?
And professor evaluations in general have problems with gender (and race). Women get rated lower for doing the same things that male professors can get away with or even get higher ratings for. (That’s true across domains, too - like performance evaluations in workplaces, for example.)
