Are there any college students here who rely on ratemyprofessor.com?

Question

I was trying to populate my summer and fall schedule as best I can before my registration date comes up and I was browsing through RateMyProfessor.com to scope out some of the unfamiliar names. It led me to wonder how many other people use it and actually rely on it for a vaguely accurate mental picture of what to expect.

For those who do use it: am I the only one who reads the frowny-face comments which mostly say, "This professor gave waaay too much work! He didn't seem to understand we're taking other classes besides his!" and say to yourself, "Yeah, right. You're a slacker and you're just angry because you couldn't slack in this guy's class."?

I don't necessarily base my schedule choices off of what people post on that site, I realize that would be incredibly foolish. However, I also believe there is virtually no difference between looking someone up on there and saying to a group of friends, "Have you taken a class with professor so-and-so? What's she like?"

Some of my favorite professors have horrible ratings on there, and these are educators whom I believe to be fantastic at what they do... RPM isn't the authority, but word-of-mouth is effective and at least 20% reliable.

And the chili pepper is just there for fun.

Answer 1

Heck yeah!

RMP is essential to me. It's made the total difference in some of my classes. For example, there's this generic class that almost everyone is required to take here, and it's known for being the most boring class on campus. There are like 25 sections of it every semester, and it's just terrible and dry. But on RMP, I found a teacher who had incredible ratings and discovered he was teaching one of the sections of this "terrible" class. I took the class with him because of his great ratings, and it became my fave class ever. My prof was INCREDIBLE and he's become a reference and someone to write recommendation letters for me, which is fabulous.

Then on the other hand, I once ignored the bad ratings for a teacher and enrolled anyway...and then I found out everyone was right and I had to withdraw from the class halfway through because it was ridiculous.

But yeah, you can always tell who the slackers are who just want an easy A.

However, despite any negative aspects to the site, it can't be denied that there are some terrible teachers out there (and some great ones), and any way to help students sort through the jumble of names is something good, in my book.

Answer 2

I have relied on RMP for class choice for a couple of years now (I'm also my college's admin). You have to take every rating with a grain of salt, and I virtually ignore ratings without descriptions.

You can totally pick out the slackers, though, especially when a teacher has 35 excellent ratings and one rating looks like it was typed on a cell phone: "she gvs 2 much homworkand is 2 hrd."

There are some funny ones on there, though, one of my faves was, "My teacher only spoke to me in Spanish!!!" (a Spanish III class) and "Too much math!" (a calculus class).

Answer 3

its just a stupid website that doesnt mean anything. If you honestly take this website seriously then you are pretty stupid. Did you notice how search for a professor by "hotness". its just a joke website.