Use RateMyProfessors cautiously

Rate My Professors

As winter quarter comes to a much needed end, some students are browsing their college course website to find open classes that they can register for. Registering for classes is an incredibly complex task. Students must first find what classes to take in order to satisfy their degree requirements. Step two is looking through the college website and finding open sections of the desired classes. The most important step before putting the class on one’s tuition bill is to look up the instructor’s name on Rate My Professors.

This step is where the complexity tends to arise. Students realize that some instructors received terrible scores, but those sections might be the only ones that are open. Some students are actually willing to add extra time in their academic career in order to take a class that’s taught by a specific instructor who received a high score on Rate My Professors.

Rate My Professors is a useful tool for all students. It gives advice on which professor is great at teaching and directs students to classes with instructors who thoroughly understand the material and are adept at teaching it. However, Rate My Professors can be a double-edged sword. Students must be wary about some of the information on the website, and need to make their own decision based solely on their method of learning.

Rate My Professors is a website for students to review their college professors. The online review site has a large database of colleges and professors across the U.S. The reviews are anonymous and they are specific to which classes the student took. The review pages for professors are set up in a straightforward way. On the page, users can quickly see the professor’s average score, level of difficulty and the average score of how many students are willing to retake the professor. Rate My Professors also has a “hotness” chili pepper for good looking instructors.

Normally, the review site is incredibly valuable. Students retell their experiences and give thorough advice on how to be successful for the class and what to expect. These reviews are helpful as it allows readers to assess themselves and determine if they have similiarities to some of the reviewers who were successful in the class. If there are similarities, it’s likely the reader will succeed in the class. Unfortunately, most reviews on Rate My Professors are not like this.

Bad reviews that are common often criticize the amount of work that is required in a class. These assessments are unnecessary and don’t actually describe the professor or their teaching abilities. In a college class, students should expect to put more work in. Having more work helps students confidently understand the material. If it is a class in a three-part course sequence, then putting more effort into each level is necessary because the material often carries over and a complete knowledge of the prerequisite information is necessary in order to prepare students for higher-level classes. In fact, when students complain about having too much work on Rate My Professors, it doesn’t review the instructor and instead, demonstrates the reviewer’s lack of proper work ethic.

When students use Rate My Professors, it’s important for them to understand their own learning ability and method of studying before considering reviews. It’s possible that some professors’ teaching methods don’t work for some students. Some professors rely on visual or auditory learning. Some students learn best with tactile methods such as in-class experiments. So, when there is a comment about the amount of work, that doesn’t necessarily describe the professor’s teaching abilities.

With a mix of reviews, it’s hard to take Rate My Professors seriously. Just look at this review of a BC math instructor: “Bro this weirdo only talks about Eva Longoria, and wears the same beaters every day for the last eight years.” How is this supposed to help anyone understand what the class is like?

Rate My Professors can be a great tool, but it needs to be used cautiously. This website is a helpful for students who wish to have an insight on the class experience as well as the professor’s teaching style. However, if nonsense reviews are obstructing students’ education, then the website needs to be avoided.