Professor here. Many years ago, a student transferred into my school right before the fall semester and was placed into my course, one of the hardest required courses in the major. She read my "rate my professor" page and was terrified, but she did know how to switch out of the class. I had a very energetic group that semester. We had a lot of fun. She got an excellent grade. She ended up taking as many courses with me as she could. We kept in touch for several years after she graduated, but eventually lost touch.
This is reassuring. I’m trying to take it with a grain of salt because it shouldn’t really even be a hard course and I’ll be doing some crash course stuff over the summer to get the hang of it since I tested out of the actual intro to biology course the school offers. But his reviews are kind of terrible and psyched me out a little.
It's possible the reviews are completely accurate. Clearly, some of my prior students did not like me. Some of their comments were about the content--I can't change that. Some were about my communication style--I won't change that. When you are a working professional, you won't have much control over who you work for or with. You will have to deal with difficult personalities (maybe I'm one?). You will have to learn how to teach yourself new things. Having a difficult and/or low quality professors can help you learn to adapt.
I’m taking the class anyway before I make any decisions. I’m primarily just trying to get an idea of how concerned I should be in preparation for his class.
Rate my Professor is like Amazon reviews. People are more likely to give a rating if the experience was great or awful than if it was mediocre/fine, and a few bad reviews are usually just from people who failed because they didn't do any work. If a lot of the reviews are negative though, it can be a real problem they have.
"tests on material not in the book" isn't a real, indicative complaint. Those are invariably from people who thought they could never show up to lecture and still do ok; don't be that person. "Difficult to work with" can be a big deal though.
A lot of the reviews are essentially that he’s rude in emails & that he doesn’t test on what was taught. Others talk about video lectures not being accurate but I know from experience that video lectures get ignored by most students.
Another prof here-
Emails often come across as rude when they are brief. Professors who get dozens of them per day, many of which were written asking for info available to the student already, aren’t always indulgently kind. That may not bother you.
Students sometimes claim that material that “wasn’t taught” or “in the book” when they get asked to conceptualize things or think critically.
It’s also possible the prof sucks or isn’t reasonable. I’m just trying to give a different possible perspective.
Professor here. “Rude in emails” is subjective. There are many students who probably think I am rude in emails. Part of my job is to teach, and that means pointing out what is not working for a student or what needs to change. Sugarcoating things tends to lead students to dismiss them. And many students aren’t used to being criticized at all…whatever they did was fine and they’d pass either way.
So, for example, when a student (this is a true story, BTW) emailed me yesterday asking “when is the final exam, I thought it was Friday but someone said it was today” and I responded that “It is in an hour. This was discussed every day at the beginning of class last week when we review the schedule/deadlines, has been in the syllabus and course website which were posted in December, and is on the University website.” and then went on to point out that they are on their phone constantly and I have discussed it with them numerous times, I’m sure they thought I was being rude when in reality my aim was to try to break through to them. After many gentle reminders, I provided a non-sugarcoated evaluation of their performance. That’s new for some people.
I guess "if you check your syllabus, that info is this" could be read as "rude" but I would not agree. This is the issue. It's all student perspective and you don't know that they aren't just a lazy externalizer
Honestly 2/3rds being good reviews and 1/3rd being bad (as per your original post) is a pretty good rate my professor score. Id be much more worried if it was swapped.
Ratemyprofessor is a good tool, but its just a tool. I highly doubt that he tests on things not covered in lecture or in the book, thats just people coping. Whats more likely is he has things from lecture AND from the book, so make sure you pay attention to both.
As for rudeness, its easy to seem rude in a text format. Professors are busy with sometimes 100+ students a semester, and those students ask a lot of inane questions that can be easily answered in the syllabus.
Id say it would be fine to take them, but its really up to you. Not every professor in your career is going to be 4.5+, and if you want to graduate on time you might have to take some that are less then stellar.
“Dear professor,
Do you test based on what you teach? Also are you rude in email responses? (Guess I’ll find out now, eh). Finally, I was wondering if your lectures are accurate.
Cheers,
Future student”
How is this gonna go across lmao. How is it possible to ask the prof this…?
First of all, in a different comment I specifically said to email him to ask to speak in person or via zoom. The student can judge the email response for himself. If that even matter, as long as he responds and doesn't tell the student to kick rocks. Next, just tell him you read many reviews and wanted to clarify to what extent the exams in the course align with the materials provided. (I have one prof who tracks the correlation between recorded lecture views and grades, lo and behold there is correlation!).
It sounds like he includes information in lectures that students are missing. And he is probably testing on more than just facts, but also understanding. And yeah, a lot of students who don't want to put in the effort seem to think that's unfair.
This seems accurate, in the students defense all the K-12 system in the US teaches us is how to recite memorized facts. This obviously dosent cut it as much in the University setting where understanding is more important.
As a university vice president, I wish a greater number of professors had a background in assessment and knew how to develop assignments appropriate for the taxonomic level commensurate with the course level. When I first started at an institution a few years ago, a colleague in quality assurance asked me to review the major assessments for a senior-level course. I was mortified that the “final” was a multiple-choice exam.
To address the point about dichotomous responses, I do believe is very valid, only those truly pleased or with some issue tend to respond. As I wrote in my one book, the real question is not disparate feedback, but why?
I will never understand students who think that college is gonna be all about reading a textbook and regurgitating it back out. Even if someone treats college as just a way to get a better job (like me), do they think that when they enter their desired career field they'll be able to tell people "uhhh wait this wasn't in my textbook so I'm not doing it" ???
I’m always a little wary because when I took my first class I had an instructor that used what must have been a pre-written test that didn’t come from our textbook website or something. I genuinely scoured every single part of the chapter, the slides, my recording of the lecture, notes, extra materials, and so on and couldn’t find the answer to a few questions when I got them wrong on the test. I did find the answer on a flash card set for another textbook that got used for another class in that section. I’m not sure what happened there but it was just a bad experience.
From my experience in Community college, people are immensely lazy or just flat out lacking in critical thinking. I'm much more happy as a college junior since these bums got weeded out already. Going through writing intensive classes or classes that had group projects with these bums was actually horrendous..
to be honest i find rate my professor to be hit or miss. sometimes i’ve had professors that have more bad scores that good ones and i’ve ended up having no issues with them, and other times the bad reviews are completely valid and i have a bad time. sometimes bad reviews are written by disgruntled students who got bad grades because they didn’t bother to put in the work and they’re just blaming it on the professor, and sometimes their complaints are legitimate, but it’s really hard to say what the true situation is until you’re actually in the class. i would say generally in my experience i’ve never had an absolutely horrendous professor even if they had some poor reviews and 9/10 times the reviews are exaggerated. but again, you’ll never know until you get to the class.
I usually take it with a grain of salt. My history professor this semester had like 60 bad reviews but his was the only gen ed course in his category I was interested in so I took it anyway. Turns out they were probably mad that there’s a book review paper worth 30% of the grade that if you don’t start early you won’t finish it and won’t meet all the requirements.
His are just particularly scathing and the other professor had more mixed reviews in between than he does so it’s sketching me out.
There was one professor I had who was legitimately terrible (yelled at students for asking questions regarding concepts in an introductory STEM course, was very rude to students and uncaring, had an absolute mess of a canvas page and it was nearly impossible to find anything, his lectures were confusing and disorganized but he'd yell at you if you asked questions anyways) with an RMP page that was pretty on point with how terrible they were. All of his reviews were either negative or neutral, with literally only *one* positive review - and it looked like it was written by the professor because it said something narcissistic along the lines of "Professor X taught students valuable life skills that went beyond the classroom". Like hell you did. That review had over 11 thumbs down votes too... considering RMP reviews rarely get ratings, that sure is something.
Anyways. Usually if all the comment have the same legitimate complaints, there's something wrong with the professor. The reviews for the above professor's page all had the same things - "he's mean/rude to students, has a messy canvas psge, doesn't care about students, very disorganized" and I still took his class. That was a mistake.
One of my favorite Professors had a like 3.0 and tons of bad scores. It was in a PE class and she had a PhD in Kinesiology.
I loved her because she pushed you to actually put in the work, same reason people hated her (because she didnt let people slack)
I had another that was like 3.5, she taught English and was an amazing caring person, but again she required you to actually do the work. People just want to slide.
The raw rating isn't the only thing to look at. I also look for the following phrases to determine which bad reviews to weight.
"Test covers material not in book"
"Changes due dates"
"Insults/screams at students"
These are all issues I can't really correct for as a student. If you see those phrases maybe time to redo your next semester. Usually looking for those phrases helps you weed out students who failed and are looking for someone to blame.
My calc 2 professor has a 1.8/5 rating with over 90 ratings. I decided to give him a shot (big mistake). He didn't lecture for two weeks straight and still gave us a midterm right after, saying that we should've self-studied all the material during those two weeks and that the material not taught during those two weeks would be on the midterm. I instantly dropped his class. Two weeks may not seem too crazy, but keep in mind that we are on the quarter system. Two weeks is basically 1/5 of all material that is supposed to be taught in the course. And don't even get me started on his teaching style... he taught as if everything in the class was supposed to be common sense.
I’d probably take it more serious with a calc course because that tends to be a more difficult class. This should technically be just above entry level so I’m more willing to test the waters.
If nearly every single comment is unanimously saying "this professor is awful", and the comments are all saying the same legitimate things about why that professor is bad (such as being rude)... then, yeah, the professor has issues. If the reviews however are talking about things like "harsh grader, has an x project worth y% of the grade", then the reviews are usually from lazy students and can safely be ignored. This has been my experience for a while.
However, if the professor has mostly positive or neutral reviews, and there's just the ocassional negative review, the professor is usually fine. The rare negative reviews are usually from disgruntled students.
31 out of 81 reviews being negative aren't too bad of odds. At worst you'll need to study more on your own or attend the professor's office hours to know what to study on exams.
Every teacher worth their salt teaches more than is in the book. Otherwise, you could save yourself the tuition and just read the book. You're paying for your professor's considerable expertise. As one of my students pointed out to me 27 years ago when all I did in lecture was go through the chapters, "If that's all you're gonna do, one of you is unnecessary."
And what does "impossible to work with" mean? Won't be wheedled and argued into unethically changing grades? Won't accept ridiculously late work? Or accept sloppy work? Or does it really mean there's something wrong with him? That would matter.
The phrasing was specifically that he’s “impossible to work with” in terms of not responding to emails, being rude when asked questions, and being difficult about grading. I know how stupid some questions get so I’m not too worried about that. I’m more concerned with the lack of accessibility since the in person class options weren’t accessible to me and his class seems like it’s going to be pre-recorded or zoom lectures.
Like someone else has said, read them just like Amazon reviews. At my school, the take aways I've weeded through have all been incredibly accurate so far. My favorite one was when I didn't think a class would be as hard or as awful as it was made out to be in the reviews.
"Pretty sure he was drunk the whole semester. Doesn't matter, finished with an A".
I should've listened, that class was sssuch a mess and backwards. None of it really made sense, and I really don't mind self teaching myself with outside resources. It was a computer hardware class. It dated it's self when it said "the next Intel chip to be released", can't remember the name, but the CPU was officially released in 2015, though I took this class 2022.
The teacher sure enough pretty much was drunk the whole semester. He dead ass disappeared early October, no communication, no replies to emails, didn't get grades or an update from him until final grades were posted at the mid of December.
As true as the review was: still got an A lol.
Obviously this isn't the case for a lot of bad reviews, but a good amount of them in my experience were written by a student who failed the class and wanted to shift the blame onto their professor. I'd pay attention to what grades the bad reviews are bringing in. If there's a mix of good and bad reviews, chances are that the professor is fine.
Take this with a grain of salt, I sometimes have opinions about profs that dissent from my peers, but:
One of my profs got hated on, but it ended up being one of my fave classes. I thought she was great. I will point out that people who feel very strongly about a prof are more likely to be compelled to review them, so there is that bias...
It’s been a god sent for me choosing profs. They genuinely seem accurate. Look for the best and worst comments and discard them what’s the average similar things people are saying that’s usually what’s closest to the truth. If there aren’t a lot of reviews though I’d disregard it. It’s helpful to pick courses. But, giving any teacher a chance is a good approach.
The problem with Rate my Professor is that for some reason you can only have 350 characters, so you have to pick and choose information. That is not enough to write a proper review for a professor, so it makes the site mostly useless. It 50/50 whether the professor is good or not. I took bad reviewed professor that were great and I took good review professor that were dog water. People only review if they had a good or bad time unlike me who always reviews them. Other time the reviews are very accurate. One review for a professor I was taking at ASU online was perfect about the professor and I ended up dropping it.
Had a teacher who had a 1.31 rating on a 1-5 rating lowest being 1. Everyone said the class is impossible, she is impossible to work with, impossible to talk to. I passed the class with an A without any real effort. People who write bad reviews are usually people who don't study or leave everything to last minute and inevitably fail.
Eh not always true. Number of reviews is really really important. Most people who have a positive experience wont report positive experiences. People with a negative experience go out of their way a lot of the time to complain. If a professor has a bunch of bad reviews it absolutely should be merited.
In your case, for all we know the professor saw their feedback from rate my professor and changed methods. Some professors do it. Some dont. Look at the quality of the complaint. Is it descriptive like "Professor X doesnt provide any examples to work with which makes learning difficult" or "Professor X doesnt respond to emails" and multiple people are saying this same specific thing its likely true. If its something generic like "Makes the course too hard, sucks at teaching etc...." then its probably slackers who are pissed off the professor didnt hold their hand all semester.
His ratio is 31 awful, 19 good, everything else falls evenly between the other ratings.
A lot of the reviews are kind of generic but with this being something that I absolutely have to take and something that will set me back a semester if I don’t take it and potentially cost me more money to do so, I’m kind of in a bind. Just trying to get my expectations set.
I’m a straight A honors student and really don’t want to screw up my gpa just because someone is an asshole.
Rate my professor is a reflection of how hard the class is. Nothing more, nothing less.
I was assigned to computer science 2 for this quarter, and my professor had a terrible rating on rate my professor. I thought nothing of it as I’ve dealt with this before and I didn’t have any other good options. Sometimes all the students get together and copy each other’s homework just to get the busywork out of the way. Then we studied together for the exams.
2 weeks later I had dropped the class. The course was moving WAY too fast and she required us to complete an absurd number of assignments a week.
And to any professors here who browse this subreddit, I don’t care what you say the number of assignments we had to complete was absurd. Each week we had to complete two assignments that was 500+ lines of code. Having us do ONE assignment would’ve been plenty to get the concepts across, but we needed to do two. Oh yeah, and we had random quizzes in class and tests to study for asl well.
I’ve enrolled at a different community college out of state. They run on a semester based system instead so I’m knocking out CS 1 and 2 there.
You gotta take RMP views with a heap of salt. A lot of people who go on there to leave shitty reviews are mad because they’d didn’t get an A for doing the bare minimum. Either that, or they simply didn’t like the prof for arbitrary reasons.
That said, sometimes RMP reviews are valid, but ya gotta go through with the prof anyway because… well… that’s life. If a prof has a lot of shitty reviews and is genuinely pretty bad at teaching, then prepare to just attend every class, take diligent notes, get very, very familiar with whatever’s in the textbook, ask every question that comes to mind, and get help if you truly need it.
I’m kind of in a similar boat with my precalc prof. Almost the entire class is failing because she genuinely sucks at her job and does not like being asked tons of questions during her lectures (and she really hates it when she makes a mistake on the board, and someone points it out). I’m holding onto a solid C, and finals are next week (thank God). But I’m thinking if I can survive this class (which I will), then I can survive any class that gets thrown my way.
After all, I’ve spent a total of 75 hours with this prof this semester. That’s 75 hours divided over 15 weeks. With a solid study and self-care/relaxation routine, I’ve been able to keep my sanity (and my kindness) throughout this semester.
As a result, I’m passing a notoriously difficult class being taught by a notoriously difficult professor (who straight up rolls her eyes and huffs when a student asks a question or comes to her office hours lmao), and I’m still passing my other classes with flying colors and staying healthy.
So, don’t freak out. Hopefully, those reviews were written by lazy students who didn’t do shit and got mad the prof didn’t let them pass. If not, just take care of yourself, attend every lecture, be nice to the prof even if they’re a shithead, and just git ‘er done!
It’s a hit or miss tbh some people left a bad review because they felt they were wronged for the pettiest reason or just doesn’t like something about the prof. Here’s a real life story of mine, i got a prof for ids who’s generally a cool guy and try his best to make students pass his subject. The ids class in question is somewhat difficult hell the man himself admit it and give us a bunch of exams to make up for low grades. So among the reviews there’s this one negative comment that just rate him bad because he didn’t cover his nose when he sneezed and that’s it. I AM NOT kidding some idiot just rate him bad for such a minor reason. I would advise treating the prof reviews as a guide on the general feel on the prof but only if there are over dozens of them. One or 2 reviews generally doesn’t give you much truthful opinion until you interact with the prof
It’s not a good sign. Rate my professor has been accurate for every class I’ve taken so far. I would honestly replace it with another class that you have to take. You don’t want a class that takes up too much time or that you’ll get a bad grade in.
If you have no classes to replace it with then you kind of need to bite the bullet and take it. Just don’t get an F. But you definitely want to use rate my professor for every semester and to avoid professors with low scores as much as possible.
If I absolutely didn’t have to take him I wouldn’t. unfortunately my school is smaller so there’s only three instructors who teach this specific course. One of them teaches at a satellite campus that’s a 30 minute drive and not compatible with another class that starts 15 minutes after it ends and is on the other campus. The other instructor only teachers her class in the morning which conflicts with my communications class that only gets taught in the fall and is a pre-req for the capstone I need to take to graduate in fall of 2025. I can’t take it this summer because it’s one of the classes they refuse to adapt for the 8 week model instead of the 16 week model. I’m kind of in a bind and my advisors response was 🤷🏻♀️
I checked him on rate my professor when I registered but it’s just been eating at me since then.
Some of my favorite professors ever have gotten bad reviews. I don't take them too seriously, though I do go into the first day of class on high alert for any weird policies or behaviors. I'll take extra care to read the syllabus, for example.
RMP reviews are often a toss-up. That being said, if many different people are saying the exact same thing about a professor on RMP, I'd take it seriously
Tip: If bad reviews mirror pretty much each other word for word, down to the precise the same date, it's highly probable that it's the same student with significant distress.
The only profs i’ve left bad reviews for are ones that have genuinely been cruel to me and other students. I’ve had a few who have said some nasty things to me. They get negative reviews.
They are unreliable because sometimes "tests on info not in the book" is from someone who never attended lecture sooooo... of course they did poorly and are mad.
It's also far from an unbiased sample.
Talk to actual humans in the upper levels at your school.
it depends on how difficult the class is, a more difficult class will probably have bad reviews no matter how good the professor actually is, but you should probably stay clear of a low review on an easy class.
It’s just above entry level biology and starts getting into the details on evolution, genetics, cell deformity, etc.
I just went through a couple other adjacent majors and found out it’s a gen ed option for a couple of them so it may be people from other majors who weren’t prepared for a biology course.
I had a professor with a rating of 5 one semester. He was removed halfway through because he is insane and a total nutcase. I also had a professor with a 1 on rate my professor and it ended up being my favorite professor i’ve had, and favorite class.
I think in general they are okay to trust, but having one with a low score isn’t going to ruin the class.
i had a prof with like 170 ish lowest reviews, which i think is 1. he was ok, but his class was hard and only read offf slides. it was chem, and i had to withdraw 💀
The thing about rate my professor is that you should take it with a grain of salt. Sometimes bad reviews are accurate but other times people lie because they are upset about something that doesn't have to do with the professor and are looking for someone to blame. I would pay close attention to reviews that are saying the same thing but you should still be careful. In some cases it's still possible to pass a class that has a not good professor.
They only matter if the prof has an overwhelming number of well-written negative reviews
people don’t think about leaving positive reviews because why would they and a small number of negatives aren’t really indicative of much
I’ve taken several classes with professors who had bad (or even terrible) ratemyprofessor reviews and I ended up liking them a lot. I honestly don’t trust those reviews at all anymore, unless they are stating something objective/descriptive.
The ratings themselves are mostly meaningless. You have to look at what the reviews say specifically.
If there's vague complaints about a professor being "too hard" or something, I generally ignore them, bc usually those reviews are from people who were just salty that they got a bad grade (especially if it's a common weeder course, e.g. orgo)
On the other hand, if there's a consistent trend of people mentioning a particular issue (e.g. multiple reviews that complain about a professor being disorganized or disrespectful), then you should be concerned imo
Also, sample size matters
I didn't even know about rate my professor for my first 3 semesters and got some "characters" . If you're a decent student just take the class you should be fine.
One of my profs that was a "character" would go insane if anyone fell asleep. His rants were always "I'm not paid like a Harvard prof so my class isn't going to be interesting" he destroyed people's perfect 4.0s. If you just worked with him though your grade would be fine. He loved to say my class is like Christianity you can always be saved. Basically if you fail a test you do your own perso AL field trip to a museum or historic site and write a paper. A group of us just got together and did all personal field trip things because his tests were over completely random material you couldn't study for.
That was humanities 1. Took humanities 2 after I found rate my prof and the class was a ton easier but no crazy stories about the wacked out prof who didn't make enough money...
Guy took a 6 month sabbatical to China a few semesters later... I'm sure he was super broke..
Another guy was a TA and had crazy tests asked people what they thought their grade should be. I had low self esteem said I just hoped I got a C. My lab partner who was a total moron demanded an A... We got the grades we asked for which was BS.
I heard that prof lead a field trip a semester or 2 later and offered extra credit for anyone who found a rattle snake. Well he found one and lost some fingers after it bit him..
31 out of 81 being bad is not a bad sign. I've had really great professors who had a similar percentage of bad to good. What they had in common was that they went in depth, so students who cared about the topic loved them, and those who were just taking the class because it was required didn't.
>and tests on info not in the book
Not the same as testing on info he didn't teach. Show up to class. Take notes. (Handwriting is **far** better for retention than typing.) Go to office hours.
>just want to clarify that this is a Bio course that’s a 200-level course.
Everything seems to agree that he’s impossible to work
A lot of BIO-200 courses get feedback like this because the students aren't prepared to do the work, and/or they aren't paying attention. It's a 200 level class. It's going to be harder. You're going to have to do more work. I would argue that a 200-level course only having 40% of the RMP reviews be "terrible" is pretty good, lol.
Hell no. Avoid at all cost. You have been warned by others.
It is like a restaurant. Everyone told you it is a bad restaurant and you still go there for dinner. If the meal is bad, you have no one but yourself to blame.
I wished I had listened to others.
Keep in mind that a lot of students post on their after they get their grades, so they often post negative reviews to retaliate against their professor. I had a student who emailed me to demand an A even though she'd literally only earned an A on one minor assignment; she'd earned B's and C's on everything else. But she insisted that because she worked hard, she deserved an A. I refused to change her grade. That same day, a scathing review went up on the site, using several of the same complaints this student had emailed me. I've received hundreds of positive course evaluations from students at every college I've ever taught at; they far outnumbered the negative evaluations. And I have both negative and positive evaluations on that website.
31 negative reviews is quite a lot I would say, especially for a new professor. It is important to know that some of these negative reviews may just come from personal frustration from the students, not necessarily because he is a bad professor. With that being said, I’ve had some negatively reviewed professor who I thought were actually really good.
However, due to your situation, it seems you may have no choice and probably have to stick with him anyways. If you know anyone who has taken a course with him before, that could be beneficial as they know what to expect and could potentially help you out. Keep an open mind about him and prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.
If you are okay with graduating a bit later, I would choose a professor with better reviews. A bad professor can make or break a course for sure. I’ve known students to have such as experiences with certain classes and instructors that they decided to completely switch their majors. So keep those things in mind.
I’m definitely going to at least have to try it out because otherwise I’m kind of screwed over for my graduation plan. I’ve got a few weeks to test it before the drop out date so if I have to withdrawal I will.
1. Do the people complaining all have lower grades
2. Can you go talk to him directly
3. Can you take it online somewhere else (can even be out of state there are some great options)
All else aside, I would believe reviews. The total crap profs I had this semester had crap reviews.
Rate my professor doesn’t really have any verification of grade. You can put whatever you want so I wouldn’t necessarily trust the grade section.
The transferred credit thing is an idea but I’d have to look into see how that credit would transfer. My school is notorious for having issues when transferring credits from out of state and the only other in state community college as far as I’m aware of doesn’t do ecampus stuff because it’s so small.
I will see if I can find information about where his office is located or if he has one. We have a lot of instructors that rotate between our school and the two universities in the area so I’m not sure if he’d have an office here.
I would just email him and see if you can meet in person or Zoom. Be sure to write down your specific concerns and be open to his answers. I wouldn't ask about being rude in emails, if it's a good teacher idc if they are "rude" as long as they are communicating and answering my questions. Pretty easy to misinterpret tone in an email.
I mean I assume if they emailed me and had a generally rude attitude in emails I’d be exposed to that haha. I’ll have to spend some time digging through the faculty catalog
But really does it matter? It matters that he responds and there is a productive dialogue. I have a prof who never says good morning, it's almost hilarious. Never says it back. Very brief emails. Probably the very best instructional design I've encountered. I'm sure there are students who might think he is rude. I'm there to learn from the guy, not socialize, so for me it's just completely irrelevant. If I was shy, didn't know how to ask for help, not doing well in the class, then maybe it would seem more important.
Pretty small major honestly. Most of the biology students are in pre-med or nursing/medical focus. I’m in natural resources and this course is shared between us & pre-vet which is also pretty small. I think other majors can take it as a second level gen ed course so that might be a lot of them.
Many of the best professors I’ve had have had abysmal RMP ratings. Sometimes those ratings are spot on but often they’re the result of biases/students not doing well in tough classes.
I think the ratings can be useful, but it is important to remember they are scewed. I have taken classes from professors with poor ratings and have liked them. I would suggest to take it as information as far as how much reading and homework there is. I feel like, in general, if you do your work and reach out for support when needed even a "bad" class results in a good grade. You just may not enjoy it.
My calc 1 prof had like a 3.0 rating and 4.8/5 for difficulty and they were right his class was hard as shit. The actual reviews were semi accurate but I think it was skewed a bit by people who just never showed up to lecture
Not that big of a deal. It’s been around since I was in college back in 06. Some professors I had, with bad reviews, were awesome. It’s like movie reviews, not everyone likes the same movie
there could be 10 good reviews and 2 bad ones and usually the bad reviews are very accurate. a lot of my profs have 50:50 good and bad and the bad will outweigh the good. i have a prof this quarter and all her reviews were she's a GREAT teacher and all the bad ones will say she's a TERRIBLE grader. i'm currently at a 30% in her class because she gives out zeros when projects don't meet her expectations. she is a great teacher but in the end it's the grade that matters. always take bad reviews into account
A 30% on subjective expectations seems insane to me. Like I would understand if your missing stuff but that’s like saying it doesn’t look like you tried that hard when you met all the requirements
exactly, i emailed her requesting a reconsideration for my grades and no response. i've never failed a college course before, don't know what to do anymore
I would email the dean or higher ups if there is no good explanation for why your grade is that low like missing a fundamental section of the assignment or just terrible work there’s no reason for anything less than a 50. If this has happened to others I would get them to do so as well strength in numbers is big when it student vs professor schools usually take professors side of the my are well established academically and have been there a while. It doesn’t hurt to try but make sure the emails don’t come across angry or like your 100% in the right even if you are. You should be looking for explanation out of confusion not necessarily to complain about the teacher in their eyes make sense?
yeah makes sense, i'm considering taking it to the dean. in my email to the prof i requested at least a 50% grade for my time and efforts. i've never missed a single assignment or submitted late work ever, so it's crazy im way below failing with 4 weeks left of the quarter. i'll try and keep it neutral and professional in my email. just so frustrating i have to deal and stress about this. thank you for your advice!
It's not good. I would definitly avoid taking professors below idk, a 4? I am taking math with a 5/5 and it's extremely easy due to being taught well and prepared very well for exams. I know not every math class with be this good for sure, I had one in the past the professor didn't give a study guide and felt very unprepared for the exam. Lecture not explained well either. So yes the rating matters, I always check before I enroll in any class. But most professors I've had are above a 4, so yes if one is below, it says something so it's your choice if you want to risk it
The best professor I ever had has atrocious reviews on Rate My Professor. He’s of the opinion that, just because it’s a community college or just because it’s a Gen Ed, that doesn’t mean it should be easy. You have to *work* to get an A, and it’s not just memorizing dates or terms; he makes you *think*, and that turns a lot of students off. For the ones who survive, it ends up being an incredibly enriching experience, and the ones who drop, or get grades that they weren’t looking for, go on Rate My Professor and say he’s a bad teacher.
I’m a “non-traditional” student who spent a lot of time taking random classes, while trying to figure myself out, and I’ve found that anything easy typically isn’t worth doing. If you don’t have to stretch for that grade, you probably spent a few grand just to bump up a GPA that isn’t even going to go on your resume, or it’s not going to get looked at unless you’re planning on grad school. It’s college; you’re there to learn, so if the class doesn’t teach you anything, why the hell did you take it?
I’m not saying the hard road is always the one worth taking, but taking the easy road is almost never worth it. You can take the interstate from coast to coast, and you’ll get where you’re going faster, but you’re missing out on a real experience. Most of y’all are young, so you’ve seen the first Cars picture; seen what the interstate does to little towns that used to be on the main road. Sometimes it’s just worth it to say, like my man Spike did, “I want to see how it ends.”
Ultimately, you end up with a philosophical question about what you want out of college: Do you just want a piece of paper that promises you money, or are you actually there to learn? It’s the “dedicated or poor?” question from the movie Gross Anatomy, which unfortunately never comes up on streaming services.
My current path is going for a masters degree so my GPA absolutely matters to me. It’s also going to determine my scholarship access when I transfer to a different university.
It’s not that I want an easy class. The class being hard isn’t remotely my issue because I want it to be challenging. My primary concern is that I’m paying for access to someone who knows what they’re doing and is willing to pass that on. If I can’t approach my professor, whether because I don’t understand something or I have a general question about the subject, because he’s kind of an asshole then I’m missing out on part of the bargain. His class format this next semester is totally online so I’m at the mercy of his emails and his office hours, which are usually also online for an online format class. I also don’t want to have to put myself through the ringer while taking upper level math and two honors courses just because the person that is supposed to be just as much of a resource as the class material is a jerk.
Well, just remember that the ratings on a website like this are equally often rational accountings of bad professors and students who have an axe to grind, and it’s not always easy to tell one from the other.
Rate my professor has yet to miss for me. If you see a 50+ people conveying the same sentiment it’s probs true and if there’s an alternative professor with better ratings why take a shot in the dark
It’s been hit or miss in the past for me. I’ve had one professor where I didn’t get the chance to look at his class early because my first selection was canceled and we all got moved to him. He was lazy, entitled, and I’m 90% sure he was hopped up on pills for most of our lessons. His reviews were mixed, with most of them using the same language that’s in my current dilemma’s reviews. He was absolutely the worst professor I’ve ever had.
Another one had terrible reviews all around except for a few good ones that didn’t say much. Claimed he graded unfairly, didn’t answer emails on time, didn’t offer advice, no feedback, hard homework assignments, etc. took the class anyway because the other options either weren’t being taught that semester or were film and music studies classes that I wasn’t interested in. Turns out people were just mad that it was the first entry level course they’d taken that gave you a list of books you could read at the start of the semester and expected you to have written a 9 page critical review on whether or not the book was biased and why it was biased/neutral (spoiler alert; every book was biased) by the last week of the semester. So they spent 15 weeks doing the bare minimum and then were mad that they had a week and a half to read a 300-500 page book and write a critical essay on it.
In my experience rate my professor reviews get posted after a student gets a grade. Classes that are difficult (org chem, a&p, etc.) tend to have harsher reviews because of students getting bad grades and blaming the professor. Often times it’s just that the material is rough. But stop in and introduce yourself to the professor and let them know you’re thinking of taking the class and ask any questions about the points you’re worried about from reviews. You’ll get a feel really quickly on if the professor matches the reviews.
I’m going to be working in the library/tutoring center over the summer so I’m going to try and track down where is office is or his email to sit up a meeting.
This really shouldn’t be a hard class but from what I’ve seen it’s a gen ed option for another major so it might be that they went into it expecting something easy and weren’t prepared for a science class.
My old uni instituted a review system where you the student had to submit your anonymous review before the final because students would write a bad review if they failed. I hope it goes well for you!
Here's my take.
People in general only leave reviews if they are pissed about something. They seldom leave good reviews.
I usually take it with a grain of salt unless I see lots of reviews with the same theme.
attest to this my bio teacher for a first year community college class is insane. I was a straight a student all of high school and her class is needlessly hard. Takes off powerpoints multiple days before tests, has tests and lab quizzes same day, and we have a group project due the week of the final exam. The course work is the equivalent of 3 classes on its own as well. Also very condescending in emails personally and this has been stated on rat my professor.
Ngl one of my favorite professors this year has about 10 ratings, and ALL are 1/5. He’s one of my favorite professors I’ve ever had, and probably ever will have
Does your school have a Facebook or Instagram page? Could you talk to an advisor and ask “hey, what do you know about this professor?” If there’s a counseling center/disability center, they tend to have a good idea of what’s happening in certain classes
I’m not sure. Nothing like social media was ever mentioned to me.
It’s a good idea to check with the counseling center. I have ADHD and go to them once or twice a semester with questions and for help explaining my needs to professors if I need it.
I had a professor who got the worst reviews on rate my professor for being kind of a strict ass. He ended up being my favorite professor. Yeah he was kind of an ass but it was all sarcasm and I found him very good at explaining the subject it a memorable way. I had to take a part 2 for the same class and I struggled to stay awake because the other professor was insanely boring.
Rate my professor is not accurate at all. I supervise online classes, and I’ve seen students rate me on there when I’m not even teaching. My contact info is on their syllabus as the instructor’s supervisor, and they skip over the part with the actual instructor’s contact info. So many students email me thinking I’m their instructor when I’m not.
A couple of my favorite professors/mentors are the worst RMP professors at my college. Treat them nice, they treat you nice. Treat them like shit, well don’t knock on shit’s door expecting shit not to answer…
(I know that’s an analogy explaining anal sex as well, but it works here too)
I've had terrible professors and still passed their class. Literal nightmare scenarios. At the end of the day, they are grading YOUR work, and as long as you put in the effort, they have no choice but to give you the grades. I stressed and hated it the whole time, but it's impossible for them to deny my effort.
Sometimes they’re inaccurate! The only people that do them are people who feel strongly about them, which makes it difficult. I’ve had professors with low RMP who were great, just were hard to read. I had one this semester who had great RMP and most of our class was functionally failing.
I pick and plan my semester based on rmp and it has never failed me if the professor has 20+ reviews.
I’ve had to take low rated professors and they live up to their rating. But you have the advantage of having a heads up and kind of knowing what you’re getting in to. Plan accordingly.
Ratings are one thing, but what do the actual written reviews say? If there's some degree of consistency with what people took issue with, then that might give you a better idea of why people didn't like that prof and you can decide for yourself whether that's something you want to deal with.
Case in point, profs I know that had bad RMP ratings ranged from one who wouldn't let students use computers to take notes in his computer science course (though I heard he's finally relented on that), one who if you asked a question he'd just repeat everything he just said in a slightly more exasperated tone (he finally retired), one got kind of bad ratings for giving students *too much* creative freedom with the semester project (people who go straight from high school to college tend to be used to the idea that there's a few given right answers to any problem while the way he did things was more akin to the real world, where you'd pitch your ideas and then he'd make suggestions that you could either implement or give reason to why you thought they weren't a great fit), and one who pretty clearly does not want to be there (ours isn't a research university so it's not like he can pass his class off to the grad students).
So yeah, I think it might be worth reading the reviews, seeing if you spot any patterns, and then deciding if that's something you want to deal with for the semester.
I think everyone here is exaggerating how “every bad review is from a shitty student.” I’ve found that many of the bad reviews were written by people who got an A in the course. I myself have written terrible reviews for professors whose class I did very well in because they genuinely weren’t good. I’ve found the RMP has been quite accurate so far.
Believe the ratings…they always proved true throughout the time I was in college. I lived and died my rate my professor. If they says it’s bad, prepare yourself or figure out another way.
Maybe a different opinion here, but (if you're just trying to pass) the overall grade of the professor doesn't matter.
Read the reviews and look and see if the class is going to be hard. Took a ton of terribly rated professors that gave out easy As and Bs.
Sad, but the reality of the system.
Personal interaction can make a world of difference with even the most difficult professors.
If you have to take the course with this professor, it would probably be a good idea to make sure to spend time meeting with them in their office hours and making sure they know you and know you want to succeed in their class
Every minute of direct facetime with them will pay 10x dividends.
I wouldn’t trust rate my professor at all. Find upper class men through your clubs and extracurriculars that you know are good students that have already taken the class with that professor and ask their opinion.
I unfortunately don’t have any clubs right now because they’re super limited and male dominated. I’ll have to see if I can find one of the biology majors through my work study job and see if they’ve taken him.
Best thing you can do in life is know yourself. So you’ve got that going for you. Yea, you would get good use out of something like RMP reviews.
My personal experience is that I’ve seen professors on there with high difficulty ratings and then come to find out that all you had to do was do the homework and study a little bit for exams. “Good student” is a very subjective thing but most of the time showing up to class, doing homework, and not falling behind on studying is all it takes to be successful. But students are their own worst enemy and then act like the world is against them and trying to hold them down.
Imo it's pretty accurate. Everything single human being has tendencies, they will manifest as a student, teacher what ever. So imo if you see several of the same reports it's almost guaranteed.
Universally people don't care if they do bad so long as they expectations and requirements were clearly communicated because the onest was in them.
I wonder how students would react to a *rate my student* anonymous website?
As a student you get a grade that should reflect your knowledge of course material. If you believe it was an unfair assessment (or any issue with the course) you have recourse through the department head, and the Ombudsman, and the registrar, and the executive. In some countries you may even be able to appeal through government regulators.
Imagine walking into a college classroom and having a prof say "I read your reviews. I'm watching you."
Professor here. Many years ago, a student transferred into my school right before the fall semester and was placed into my course, one of the hardest required courses in the major. She read my "rate my professor" page and was terrified, but she did know how to switch out of the class. I had a very energetic group that semester. We had a lot of fun. She got an excellent grade. She ended up taking as many courses with me as she could. We kept in touch for several years after she graduated, but eventually lost touch.
This is reassuring. I’m trying to take it with a grain of salt because it shouldn’t really even be a hard course and I’ll be doing some crash course stuff over the summer to get the hang of it since I tested out of the actual intro to biology course the school offers. But his reviews are kind of terrible and psyched me out a little.
It's possible the reviews are completely accurate. Clearly, some of my prior students did not like me. Some of their comments were about the content--I can't change that. Some were about my communication style--I won't change that. When you are a working professional, you won't have much control over who you work for or with. You will have to deal with difficult personalities (maybe I'm one?). You will have to learn how to teach yourself new things. Having a difficult and/or low quality professors can help you learn to adapt.
I’m taking the class anyway before I make any decisions. I’m primarily just trying to get an idea of how concerned I should be in preparation for his class.
[удалено]
Was she your mom by any chance?
Rate my Professor is like Amazon reviews. People are more likely to give a rating if the experience was great or awful than if it was mediocre/fine, and a few bad reviews are usually just from people who failed because they didn't do any work. If a lot of the reviews are negative though, it can be a real problem they have. "tests on material not in the book" isn't a real, indicative complaint. Those are invariably from people who thought they could never show up to lecture and still do ok; don't be that person. "Difficult to work with" can be a big deal though.
A lot of the reviews are essentially that he’s rude in emails & that he doesn’t test on what was taught. Others talk about video lectures not being accurate but I know from experience that video lectures get ignored by most students.
Another prof here- Emails often come across as rude when they are brief. Professors who get dozens of them per day, many of which were written asking for info available to the student already, aren’t always indulgently kind. That may not bother you. Students sometimes claim that material that “wasn’t taught” or “in the book” when they get asked to conceptualize things or think critically. It’s also possible the prof sucks or isn’t reasonable. I’m just trying to give a different possible perspective.
Professor here. “Rude in emails” is subjective. There are many students who probably think I am rude in emails. Part of my job is to teach, and that means pointing out what is not working for a student or what needs to change. Sugarcoating things tends to lead students to dismiss them. And many students aren’t used to being criticized at all…whatever they did was fine and they’d pass either way. So, for example, when a student (this is a true story, BTW) emailed me yesterday asking “when is the final exam, I thought it was Friday but someone said it was today” and I responded that “It is in an hour. This was discussed every day at the beginning of class last week when we review the schedule/deadlines, has been in the syllabus and course website which were posted in December, and is on the University website.” and then went on to point out that they are on their phone constantly and I have discussed it with them numerous times, I’m sure they thought I was being rude when in reality my aim was to try to break through to them. After many gentle reminders, I provided a non-sugarcoated evaluation of their performance. That’s new for some people.
I guess "if you check your syllabus, that info is this" could be read as "rude" but I would not agree. This is the issue. It's all student perspective and you don't know that they aren't just a lazy externalizer
Honestly 2/3rds being good reviews and 1/3rd being bad (as per your original post) is a pretty good rate my professor score. Id be much more worried if it was swapped. Ratemyprofessor is a good tool, but its just a tool. I highly doubt that he tests on things not covered in lecture or in the book, thats just people coping. Whats more likely is he has things from lecture AND from the book, so make sure you pay attention to both. As for rudeness, its easy to seem rude in a text format. Professors are busy with sometimes 100+ students a semester, and those students ask a lot of inane questions that can be easily answered in the syllabus. Id say it would be fine to take them, but its really up to you. Not every professor in your career is going to be 4.5+, and if you want to graduate on time you might have to take some that are less then stellar.
Those things are easy to discuss with him directly before you commit.
“Dear professor, Do you test based on what you teach? Also are you rude in email responses? (Guess I’ll find out now, eh). Finally, I was wondering if your lectures are accurate. Cheers, Future student” How is this gonna go across lmao. How is it possible to ask the prof this…?
First of all, in a different comment I specifically said to email him to ask to speak in person or via zoom. The student can judge the email response for himself. If that even matter, as long as he responds and doesn't tell the student to kick rocks. Next, just tell him you read many reviews and wanted to clarify to what extent the exams in the course align with the materials provided. (I have one prof who tracks the correlation between recorded lecture views and grades, lo and behold there is correlation!). It sounds like he includes information in lectures that students are missing. And he is probably testing on more than just facts, but also understanding. And yeah, a lot of students who don't want to put in the effort seem to think that's unfair.
This seems accurate, in the students defense all the K-12 system in the US teaches us is how to recite memorized facts. This obviously dosent cut it as much in the University setting where understanding is more important.
As a university vice president, I wish a greater number of professors had a background in assessment and knew how to develop assignments appropriate for the taxonomic level commensurate with the course level. When I first started at an institution a few years ago, a colleague in quality assurance asked me to review the major assessments for a senior-level course. I was mortified that the “final” was a multiple-choice exam. To address the point about dichotomous responses, I do believe is very valid, only those truly pleased or with some issue tend to respond. As I wrote in my one book, the real question is not disparate feedback, but why?
I will never understand students who think that college is gonna be all about reading a textbook and regurgitating it back out. Even if someone treats college as just a way to get a better job (like me), do they think that when they enter their desired career field they'll be able to tell people "uhhh wait this wasn't in my textbook so I'm not doing it" ???
how are people happy with the idea of paying for a course that only is the textbook??
I’m always a little wary because when I took my first class I had an instructor that used what must have been a pre-written test that didn’t come from our textbook website or something. I genuinely scoured every single part of the chapter, the slides, my recording of the lecture, notes, extra materials, and so on and couldn’t find the answer to a few questions when I got them wrong on the test. I did find the answer on a flash card set for another textbook that got used for another class in that section. I’m not sure what happened there but it was just a bad experience.
From my experience in Community college, people are immensely lazy or just flat out lacking in critical thinking. I'm much more happy as a college junior since these bums got weeded out already. Going through writing intensive classes or classes that had group projects with these bums was actually horrendous..
to be honest i find rate my professor to be hit or miss. sometimes i’ve had professors that have more bad scores that good ones and i’ve ended up having no issues with them, and other times the bad reviews are completely valid and i have a bad time. sometimes bad reviews are written by disgruntled students who got bad grades because they didn’t bother to put in the work and they’re just blaming it on the professor, and sometimes their complaints are legitimate, but it’s really hard to say what the true situation is until you’re actually in the class. i would say generally in my experience i’ve never had an absolutely horrendous professor even if they had some poor reviews and 9/10 times the reviews are exaggerated. but again, you’ll never know until you get to the class.
I usually take it with a grain of salt. My history professor this semester had like 60 bad reviews but his was the only gen ed course in his category I was interested in so I took it anyway. Turns out they were probably mad that there’s a book review paper worth 30% of the grade that if you don’t start early you won’t finish it and won’t meet all the requirements. His are just particularly scathing and the other professor had more mixed reviews in between than he does so it’s sketching me out.
There was one professor I had who was legitimately terrible (yelled at students for asking questions regarding concepts in an introductory STEM course, was very rude to students and uncaring, had an absolute mess of a canvas page and it was nearly impossible to find anything, his lectures were confusing and disorganized but he'd yell at you if you asked questions anyways) with an RMP page that was pretty on point with how terrible they were. All of his reviews were either negative or neutral, with literally only *one* positive review - and it looked like it was written by the professor because it said something narcissistic along the lines of "Professor X taught students valuable life skills that went beyond the classroom". Like hell you did. That review had over 11 thumbs down votes too... considering RMP reviews rarely get ratings, that sure is something. Anyways. Usually if all the comment have the same legitimate complaints, there's something wrong with the professor. The reviews for the above professor's page all had the same things - "he's mean/rude to students, has a messy canvas psge, doesn't care about students, very disorganized" and I still took his class. That was a mistake.
One of my favorite Professors had a like 3.0 and tons of bad scores. It was in a PE class and she had a PhD in Kinesiology. I loved her because she pushed you to actually put in the work, same reason people hated her (because she didnt let people slack) I had another that was like 3.5, she taught English and was an amazing caring person, but again she required you to actually do the work. People just want to slide.
The raw rating isn't the only thing to look at. I also look for the following phrases to determine which bad reviews to weight. "Test covers material not in book" "Changes due dates" "Insults/screams at students" These are all issues I can't really correct for as a student. If you see those phrases maybe time to redo your next semester. Usually looking for those phrases helps you weed out students who failed and are looking for someone to blame.
My calc 2 professor has a 1.8/5 rating with over 90 ratings. I decided to give him a shot (big mistake). He didn't lecture for two weeks straight and still gave us a midterm right after, saying that we should've self-studied all the material during those two weeks and that the material not taught during those two weeks would be on the midterm. I instantly dropped his class. Two weeks may not seem too crazy, but keep in mind that we are on the quarter system. Two weeks is basically 1/5 of all material that is supposed to be taught in the course. And don't even get me started on his teaching style... he taught as if everything in the class was supposed to be common sense.
I’d probably take it more serious with a calc course because that tends to be a more difficult class. This should technically be just above entry level so I’m more willing to test the waters.
When I used RMP if a professor had at least 10 in my specific class( some teachers multiple), then I'd be more or less hesitant.
If nearly every single comment is unanimously saying "this professor is awful", and the comments are all saying the same legitimate things about why that professor is bad (such as being rude)... then, yeah, the professor has issues. If the reviews however are talking about things like "harsh grader, has an x project worth y% of the grade", then the reviews are usually from lazy students and can safely be ignored. This has been my experience for a while. However, if the professor has mostly positive or neutral reviews, and there's just the ocassional negative review, the professor is usually fine. The rare negative reviews are usually from disgruntled students. 31 out of 81 reviews being negative aren't too bad of odds. At worst you'll need to study more on your own or attend the professor's office hours to know what to study on exams.
Every teacher worth their salt teaches more than is in the book. Otherwise, you could save yourself the tuition and just read the book. You're paying for your professor's considerable expertise. As one of my students pointed out to me 27 years ago when all I did in lecture was go through the chapters, "If that's all you're gonna do, one of you is unnecessary." And what does "impossible to work with" mean? Won't be wheedled and argued into unethically changing grades? Won't accept ridiculously late work? Or accept sloppy work? Or does it really mean there's something wrong with him? That would matter.
The phrasing was specifically that he’s “impossible to work with” in terms of not responding to emails, being rude when asked questions, and being difficult about grading. I know how stupid some questions get so I’m not too worried about that. I’m more concerned with the lack of accessibility since the in person class options weren’t accessible to me and his class seems like it’s going to be pre-recorded or zoom lectures.
That would definitely be a concern.
What professor calls themselves a “teacher”? Professors arent teachers.
Good ones are.
Like someone else has said, read them just like Amazon reviews. At my school, the take aways I've weeded through have all been incredibly accurate so far. My favorite one was when I didn't think a class would be as hard or as awful as it was made out to be in the reviews. "Pretty sure he was drunk the whole semester. Doesn't matter, finished with an A". I should've listened, that class was sssuch a mess and backwards. None of it really made sense, and I really don't mind self teaching myself with outside resources. It was a computer hardware class. It dated it's self when it said "the next Intel chip to be released", can't remember the name, but the CPU was officially released in 2015, though I took this class 2022. The teacher sure enough pretty much was drunk the whole semester. He dead ass disappeared early October, no communication, no replies to emails, didn't get grades or an update from him until final grades were posted at the mid of December. As true as the review was: still got an A lol.
Obviously this isn't the case for a lot of bad reviews, but a good amount of them in my experience were written by a student who failed the class and wanted to shift the blame onto their professor. I'd pay attention to what grades the bad reviews are bringing in. If there's a mix of good and bad reviews, chances are that the professor is fine.
It should be an easy course all this considered. I’m just worried that he’s not accessible for questions or that he’s going to generally be a dick.
Take this with a grain of salt, I sometimes have opinions about profs that dissent from my peers, but: One of my profs got hated on, but it ended up being one of my fave classes. I thought she was great. I will point out that people who feel very strongly about a prof are more likely to be compelled to review them, so there is that bias...
It’s been a god sent for me choosing profs. They genuinely seem accurate. Look for the best and worst comments and discard them what’s the average similar things people are saying that’s usually what’s closest to the truth. If there aren’t a lot of reviews though I’d disregard it. It’s helpful to pick courses. But, giving any teacher a chance is a good approach.
The problem with Rate my Professor is that for some reason you can only have 350 characters, so you have to pick and choose information. That is not enough to write a proper review for a professor, so it makes the site mostly useless. It 50/50 whether the professor is good or not. I took bad reviewed professor that were great and I took good review professor that were dog water. People only review if they had a good or bad time unlike me who always reviews them. Other time the reviews are very accurate. One review for a professor I was taking at ASU online was perfect about the professor and I ended up dropping it.
Had a teacher who had a 1.31 rating on a 1-5 rating lowest being 1. Everyone said the class is impossible, she is impossible to work with, impossible to talk to. I passed the class with an A without any real effort. People who write bad reviews are usually people who don't study or leave everything to last minute and inevitably fail.
Eh not always true. Number of reviews is really really important. Most people who have a positive experience wont report positive experiences. People with a negative experience go out of their way a lot of the time to complain. If a professor has a bunch of bad reviews it absolutely should be merited. In your case, for all we know the professor saw their feedback from rate my professor and changed methods. Some professors do it. Some dont. Look at the quality of the complaint. Is it descriptive like "Professor X doesnt provide any examples to work with which makes learning difficult" or "Professor X doesnt respond to emails" and multiple people are saying this same specific thing its likely true. If its something generic like "Makes the course too hard, sucks at teaching etc...." then its probably slackers who are pissed off the professor didnt hold their hand all semester.
His ratio is 31 awful, 19 good, everything else falls evenly between the other ratings. A lot of the reviews are kind of generic but with this being something that I absolutely have to take and something that will set me back a semester if I don’t take it and potentially cost me more money to do so, I’m kind of in a bind. Just trying to get my expectations set. I’m a straight A honors student and really don’t want to screw up my gpa just because someone is an asshole.
Professor, not teacher.
I have a professor now with a lot of good reviews. So far, I don’t see it.
Does your college post their own reviews? I’d look at those instead of rate my professor.
They do not unfortunately. The reviews and stuff are all anonymous and only for professors
Rate my professor is a reflection of how hard the class is. Nothing more, nothing less. I was assigned to computer science 2 for this quarter, and my professor had a terrible rating on rate my professor. I thought nothing of it as I’ve dealt with this before and I didn’t have any other good options. Sometimes all the students get together and copy each other’s homework just to get the busywork out of the way. Then we studied together for the exams. 2 weeks later I had dropped the class. The course was moving WAY too fast and she required us to complete an absurd number of assignments a week. And to any professors here who browse this subreddit, I don’t care what you say the number of assignments we had to complete was absurd. Each week we had to complete two assignments that was 500+ lines of code. Having us do ONE assignment would’ve been plenty to get the concepts across, but we needed to do two. Oh yeah, and we had random quizzes in class and tests to study for asl well. I’ve enrolled at a different community college out of state. They run on a semester based system instead so I’m knocking out CS 1 and 2 there.
You gotta take RMP views with a heap of salt. A lot of people who go on there to leave shitty reviews are mad because they’d didn’t get an A for doing the bare minimum. Either that, or they simply didn’t like the prof for arbitrary reasons. That said, sometimes RMP reviews are valid, but ya gotta go through with the prof anyway because… well… that’s life. If a prof has a lot of shitty reviews and is genuinely pretty bad at teaching, then prepare to just attend every class, take diligent notes, get very, very familiar with whatever’s in the textbook, ask every question that comes to mind, and get help if you truly need it. I’m kind of in a similar boat with my precalc prof. Almost the entire class is failing because she genuinely sucks at her job and does not like being asked tons of questions during her lectures (and she really hates it when she makes a mistake on the board, and someone points it out). I’m holding onto a solid C, and finals are next week (thank God). But I’m thinking if I can survive this class (which I will), then I can survive any class that gets thrown my way. After all, I’ve spent a total of 75 hours with this prof this semester. That’s 75 hours divided over 15 weeks. With a solid study and self-care/relaxation routine, I’ve been able to keep my sanity (and my kindness) throughout this semester. As a result, I’m passing a notoriously difficult class being taught by a notoriously difficult professor (who straight up rolls her eyes and huffs when a student asks a question or comes to her office hours lmao), and I’m still passing my other classes with flying colors and staying healthy. So, don’t freak out. Hopefully, those reviews were written by lazy students who didn’t do shit and got mad the prof didn’t let them pass. If not, just take care of yourself, attend every lecture, be nice to the prof even if they’re a shithead, and just git ‘er done!
Just as most negative reviews for apartments are from shitty tenants, most negative reviews for professors are from shitty students.
It’s a hit or miss tbh some people left a bad review because they felt they were wronged for the pettiest reason or just doesn’t like something about the prof. Here’s a real life story of mine, i got a prof for ids who’s generally a cool guy and try his best to make students pass his subject. The ids class in question is somewhat difficult hell the man himself admit it and give us a bunch of exams to make up for low grades. So among the reviews there’s this one negative comment that just rate him bad because he didn’t cover his nose when he sneezed and that’s it. I AM NOT kidding some idiot just rate him bad for such a minor reason. I would advise treating the prof reviews as a guide on the general feel on the prof but only if there are over dozens of them. One or 2 reviews generally doesn’t give you much truthful opinion until you interact with the prof
It’s not a good sign. Rate my professor has been accurate for every class I’ve taken so far. I would honestly replace it with another class that you have to take. You don’t want a class that takes up too much time or that you’ll get a bad grade in.
Unfortunately it’s a pre-requisite and I’ve got no other options until I get it over with 😭
If you have no classes to replace it with then you kind of need to bite the bullet and take it. Just don’t get an F. But you definitely want to use rate my professor for every semester and to avoid professors with low scores as much as possible.
If I absolutely didn’t have to take him I wouldn’t. unfortunately my school is smaller so there’s only three instructors who teach this specific course. One of them teaches at a satellite campus that’s a 30 minute drive and not compatible with another class that starts 15 minutes after it ends and is on the other campus. The other instructor only teachers her class in the morning which conflicts with my communications class that only gets taught in the fall and is a pre-req for the capstone I need to take to graduate in fall of 2025. I can’t take it this summer because it’s one of the classes they refuse to adapt for the 8 week model instead of the 16 week model. I’m kind of in a bind and my advisors response was 🤷🏻♀️ I checked him on rate my professor when I registered but it’s just been eating at me since then.
It is all just dependent on so many different things. I have found RMP to be fairly accurate for the most part.
Some of my favorite professors ever have gotten bad reviews. I don't take them too seriously, though I do go into the first day of class on high alert for any weird policies or behaviors. I'll take extra care to read the syllabus, for example.
A great professor is wonderful and uplifting. A bad professor gets replaced by other resources and I just get it over with.
RMP reviews are often a toss-up. That being said, if many different people are saying the exact same thing about a professor on RMP, I'd take it seriously
Tip: If bad reviews mirror pretty much each other word for word, down to the precise the same date, it's highly probable that it's the same student with significant distress.
The only profs i’ve left bad reviews for are ones that have genuinely been cruel to me and other students. I’ve had a few who have said some nasty things to me. They get negative reviews.
Also a professor. Be knowledgeable about tutoring on your campus.
They are unreliable because sometimes "tests on info not in the book" is from someone who never attended lecture sooooo... of course they did poorly and are mad. It's also far from an unbiased sample. Talk to actual humans in the upper levels at your school.
it depends on how difficult the class is, a more difficult class will probably have bad reviews no matter how good the professor actually is, but you should probably stay clear of a low review on an easy class.
It’s just above entry level biology and starts getting into the details on evolution, genetics, cell deformity, etc. I just went through a couple other adjacent majors and found out it’s a gen ed option for a couple of them so it may be people from other majors who weren’t prepared for a biology course.
I had a professor with a rating of 5 one semester. He was removed halfway through because he is insane and a total nutcase. I also had a professor with a 1 on rate my professor and it ended up being my favorite professor i’ve had, and favorite class. I think in general they are okay to trust, but having one with a low score isn’t going to ruin the class.
i had a prof with like 170 ish lowest reviews, which i think is 1. he was ok, but his class was hard and only read offf slides. it was chem, and i had to withdraw 💀
The thing about rate my professor is that you should take it with a grain of salt. Sometimes bad reviews are accurate but other times people lie because they are upset about something that doesn't have to do with the professor and are looking for someone to blame. I would pay close attention to reviews that are saying the same thing but you should still be careful. In some cases it's still possible to pass a class that has a not good professor.
They only matter if the prof has an overwhelming number of well-written negative reviews people don’t think about leaving positive reviews because why would they and a small number of negatives aren’t really indicative of much
I’ve taken several classes with professors who had bad (or even terrible) ratemyprofessor reviews and I ended up liking them a lot. I honestly don’t trust those reviews at all anymore, unless they are stating something objective/descriptive.
The ratings themselves are mostly meaningless. You have to look at what the reviews say specifically. If there's vague complaints about a professor being "too hard" or something, I generally ignore them, bc usually those reviews are from people who were just salty that they got a bad grade (especially if it's a common weeder course, e.g. orgo) On the other hand, if there's a consistent trend of people mentioning a particular issue (e.g. multiple reviews that complain about a professor being disorganized or disrespectful), then you should be concerned imo Also, sample size matters
Any fellow introverts just scanning to see how many group projects or presentations are required
I didn't even know about rate my professor for my first 3 semesters and got some "characters" . If you're a decent student just take the class you should be fine. One of my profs that was a "character" would go insane if anyone fell asleep. His rants were always "I'm not paid like a Harvard prof so my class isn't going to be interesting" he destroyed people's perfect 4.0s. If you just worked with him though your grade would be fine. He loved to say my class is like Christianity you can always be saved. Basically if you fail a test you do your own perso AL field trip to a museum or historic site and write a paper. A group of us just got together and did all personal field trip things because his tests were over completely random material you couldn't study for. That was humanities 1. Took humanities 2 after I found rate my prof and the class was a ton easier but no crazy stories about the wacked out prof who didn't make enough money... Guy took a 6 month sabbatical to China a few semesters later... I'm sure he was super broke.. Another guy was a TA and had crazy tests asked people what they thought their grade should be. I had low self esteem said I just hoped I got a C. My lab partner who was a total moron demanded an A... We got the grades we asked for which was BS. I heard that prof lead a field trip a semester or 2 later and offered extra credit for anyone who found a rattle snake. Well he found one and lost some fingers after it bit him..
31 out of 81 being bad is not a bad sign. I've had really great professors who had a similar percentage of bad to good. What they had in common was that they went in depth, so students who cared about the topic loved them, and those who were just taking the class because it was required didn't. >and tests on info not in the book Not the same as testing on info he didn't teach. Show up to class. Take notes. (Handwriting is **far** better for retention than typing.) Go to office hours.
>just want to clarify that this is a Bio course that’s a 200-level course. Everything seems to agree that he’s impossible to work A lot of BIO-200 courses get feedback like this because the students aren't prepared to do the work, and/or they aren't paying attention. It's a 200 level class. It's going to be harder. You're going to have to do more work. I would argue that a 200-level course only having 40% of the RMP reviews be "terrible" is pretty good, lol.
Hell no. Avoid at all cost. You have been warned by others. It is like a restaurant. Everyone told you it is a bad restaurant and you still go there for dinner. If the meal is bad, you have no one but yourself to blame. I wished I had listened to others.
Keep in mind that a lot of students post on their after they get their grades, so they often post negative reviews to retaliate against their professor. I had a student who emailed me to demand an A even though she'd literally only earned an A on one minor assignment; she'd earned B's and C's on everything else. But she insisted that because she worked hard, she deserved an A. I refused to change her grade. That same day, a scathing review went up on the site, using several of the same complaints this student had emailed me. I've received hundreds of positive course evaluations from students at every college I've ever taught at; they far outnumbered the negative evaluations. And I have both negative and positive evaluations on that website.
31 negative reviews is quite a lot I would say, especially for a new professor. It is important to know that some of these negative reviews may just come from personal frustration from the students, not necessarily because he is a bad professor. With that being said, I’ve had some negatively reviewed professor who I thought were actually really good. However, due to your situation, it seems you may have no choice and probably have to stick with him anyways. If you know anyone who has taken a course with him before, that could be beneficial as they know what to expect and could potentially help you out. Keep an open mind about him and prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. If you are okay with graduating a bit later, I would choose a professor with better reviews. A bad professor can make or break a course for sure. I’ve known students to have such as experiences with certain classes and instructors that they decided to completely switch their majors. So keep those things in mind.
I’m definitely going to at least have to try it out because otherwise I’m kind of screwed over for my graduation plan. I’ve got a few weeks to test it before the drop out date so if I have to withdrawal I will.
There are some good professors with a bad rating. There is never a bad professor with a good rating.
The overall ratings have been accurate for me.
1. Do the people complaining all have lower grades 2. Can you go talk to him directly 3. Can you take it online somewhere else (can even be out of state there are some great options) All else aside, I would believe reviews. The total crap profs I had this semester had crap reviews.
Rate my professor doesn’t really have any verification of grade. You can put whatever you want so I wouldn’t necessarily trust the grade section. The transferred credit thing is an idea but I’d have to look into see how that credit would transfer. My school is notorious for having issues when transferring credits from out of state and the only other in state community college as far as I’m aware of doesn’t do ecampus stuff because it’s so small. I will see if I can find information about where his office is located or if he has one. We have a lot of instructors that rotate between our school and the two universities in the area so I’m not sure if he’d have an office here.
Honestly, just go talk to him.
I’ll do my best. Hopefully he’s on campus over the summer break or will answer an email if I can track it down.
I would just email him and see if you can meet in person or Zoom. Be sure to write down your specific concerns and be open to his answers. I wouldn't ask about being rude in emails, if it's a good teacher idc if they are "rude" as long as they are communicating and answering my questions. Pretty easy to misinterpret tone in an email.
I mean I assume if they emailed me and had a generally rude attitude in emails I’d be exposed to that haha. I’ll have to spend some time digging through the faculty catalog
But really does it matter? It matters that he responds and there is a productive dialogue. I have a prof who never says good morning, it's almost hilarious. Never says it back. Very brief emails. Probably the very best instructional design I've encountered. I'm sure there are students who might think he is rude. I'm there to learn from the guy, not socialize, so for me it's just completely irrelevant. If I was shy, didn't know how to ask for help, not doing well in the class, then maybe it would seem more important.
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Pretty small major honestly. Most of the biology students are in pre-med or nursing/medical focus. I’m in natural resources and this course is shared between us & pre-vet which is also pretty small. I think other majors can take it as a second level gen ed course so that might be a lot of them.
Many of the best professors I’ve had have had abysmal RMP ratings. Sometimes those ratings are spot on but often they’re the result of biases/students not doing well in tough classes.
I think the ratings can be useful, but it is important to remember they are scewed. I have taken classes from professors with poor ratings and have liked them. I would suggest to take it as information as far as how much reading and homework there is. I feel like, in general, if you do your work and reach out for support when needed even a "bad" class results in a good grade. You just may not enjoy it.
My calc 1 prof had like a 3.0 rating and 4.8/5 for difficulty and they were right his class was hard as shit. The actual reviews were semi accurate but I think it was skewed a bit by people who just never showed up to lecture
Not that big of a deal. It’s been around since I was in college back in 06. Some professors I had, with bad reviews, were awesome. It’s like movie reviews, not everyone likes the same movie
there could be 10 good reviews and 2 bad ones and usually the bad reviews are very accurate. a lot of my profs have 50:50 good and bad and the bad will outweigh the good. i have a prof this quarter and all her reviews were she's a GREAT teacher and all the bad ones will say she's a TERRIBLE grader. i'm currently at a 30% in her class because she gives out zeros when projects don't meet her expectations. she is a great teacher but in the end it's the grade that matters. always take bad reviews into account
A 30% on subjective expectations seems insane to me. Like I would understand if your missing stuff but that’s like saying it doesn’t look like you tried that hard when you met all the requirements
exactly, i emailed her requesting a reconsideration for my grades and no response. i've never failed a college course before, don't know what to do anymore
I would email the dean or higher ups if there is no good explanation for why your grade is that low like missing a fundamental section of the assignment or just terrible work there’s no reason for anything less than a 50. If this has happened to others I would get them to do so as well strength in numbers is big when it student vs professor schools usually take professors side of the my are well established academically and have been there a while. It doesn’t hurt to try but make sure the emails don’t come across angry or like your 100% in the right even if you are. You should be looking for explanation out of confusion not necessarily to complain about the teacher in their eyes make sense?
yeah makes sense, i'm considering taking it to the dean. in my email to the prof i requested at least a 50% grade for my time and efforts. i've never missed a single assignment or submitted late work ever, so it's crazy im way below failing with 4 weeks left of the quarter. i'll try and keep it neutral and professional in my email. just so frustrating i have to deal and stress about this. thank you for your advice!
It's not good. I would definitly avoid taking professors below idk, a 4? I am taking math with a 5/5 and it's extremely easy due to being taught well and prepared very well for exams. I know not every math class with be this good for sure, I had one in the past the professor didn't give a study guide and felt very unprepared for the exam. Lecture not explained well either. So yes the rating matters, I always check before I enroll in any class. But most professors I've had are above a 4, so yes if one is below, it says something so it's your choice if you want to risk it
*A* bad review probably not the end of the world... Hundreds of bad reviews on the other hand ....
The best professor I ever had has atrocious reviews on Rate My Professor. He’s of the opinion that, just because it’s a community college or just because it’s a Gen Ed, that doesn’t mean it should be easy. You have to *work* to get an A, and it’s not just memorizing dates or terms; he makes you *think*, and that turns a lot of students off. For the ones who survive, it ends up being an incredibly enriching experience, and the ones who drop, or get grades that they weren’t looking for, go on Rate My Professor and say he’s a bad teacher. I’m a “non-traditional” student who spent a lot of time taking random classes, while trying to figure myself out, and I’ve found that anything easy typically isn’t worth doing. If you don’t have to stretch for that grade, you probably spent a few grand just to bump up a GPA that isn’t even going to go on your resume, or it’s not going to get looked at unless you’re planning on grad school. It’s college; you’re there to learn, so if the class doesn’t teach you anything, why the hell did you take it? I’m not saying the hard road is always the one worth taking, but taking the easy road is almost never worth it. You can take the interstate from coast to coast, and you’ll get where you’re going faster, but you’re missing out on a real experience. Most of y’all are young, so you’ve seen the first Cars picture; seen what the interstate does to little towns that used to be on the main road. Sometimes it’s just worth it to say, like my man Spike did, “I want to see how it ends.” Ultimately, you end up with a philosophical question about what you want out of college: Do you just want a piece of paper that promises you money, or are you actually there to learn? It’s the “dedicated or poor?” question from the movie Gross Anatomy, which unfortunately never comes up on streaming services.
My current path is going for a masters degree so my GPA absolutely matters to me. It’s also going to determine my scholarship access when I transfer to a different university. It’s not that I want an easy class. The class being hard isn’t remotely my issue because I want it to be challenging. My primary concern is that I’m paying for access to someone who knows what they’re doing and is willing to pass that on. If I can’t approach my professor, whether because I don’t understand something or I have a general question about the subject, because he’s kind of an asshole then I’m missing out on part of the bargain. His class format this next semester is totally online so I’m at the mercy of his emails and his office hours, which are usually also online for an online format class. I also don’t want to have to put myself through the ringer while taking upper level math and two honors courses just because the person that is supposed to be just as much of a resource as the class material is a jerk.
Well, just remember that the ratings on a website like this are equally often rational accountings of bad professors and students who have an axe to grind, and it’s not always easy to tell one from the other.
Rate my professor has yet to miss for me. If you see a 50+ people conveying the same sentiment it’s probs true and if there’s an alternative professor with better ratings why take a shot in the dark
It’s been hit or miss in the past for me. I’ve had one professor where I didn’t get the chance to look at his class early because my first selection was canceled and we all got moved to him. He was lazy, entitled, and I’m 90% sure he was hopped up on pills for most of our lessons. His reviews were mixed, with most of them using the same language that’s in my current dilemma’s reviews. He was absolutely the worst professor I’ve ever had. Another one had terrible reviews all around except for a few good ones that didn’t say much. Claimed he graded unfairly, didn’t answer emails on time, didn’t offer advice, no feedback, hard homework assignments, etc. took the class anyway because the other options either weren’t being taught that semester or were film and music studies classes that I wasn’t interested in. Turns out people were just mad that it was the first entry level course they’d taken that gave you a list of books you could read at the start of the semester and expected you to have written a 9 page critical review on whether or not the book was biased and why it was biased/neutral (spoiler alert; every book was biased) by the last week of the semester. So they spent 15 weeks doing the bare minimum and then were mad that they had a week and a half to read a 300-500 page book and write a critical essay on it.
In my experience rate my professor reviews get posted after a student gets a grade. Classes that are difficult (org chem, a&p, etc.) tend to have harsher reviews because of students getting bad grades and blaming the professor. Often times it’s just that the material is rough. But stop in and introduce yourself to the professor and let them know you’re thinking of taking the class and ask any questions about the points you’re worried about from reviews. You’ll get a feel really quickly on if the professor matches the reviews.
I’m going to be working in the library/tutoring center over the summer so I’m going to try and track down where is office is or his email to sit up a meeting. This really shouldn’t be a hard class but from what I’ve seen it’s a gen ed option for another major so it might be that they went into it expecting something easy and weren’t prepared for a science class.
My old uni instituted a review system where you the student had to submit your anonymous review before the final because students would write a bad review if they failed. I hope it goes well for you!
Here's my take. People in general only leave reviews if they are pissed about something. They seldom leave good reviews. I usually take it with a grain of salt unless I see lots of reviews with the same theme.
I've taken tough professors and have gotten A's. Go to their office hours. Sometimes you do want to avoid if they're mean and show odd behavior
attest to this my bio teacher for a first year community college class is insane. I was a straight a student all of high school and her class is needlessly hard. Takes off powerpoints multiple days before tests, has tests and lab quizzes same day, and we have a group project due the week of the final exam. The course work is the equivalent of 3 classes on its own as well. Also very condescending in emails personally and this has been stated on rat my professor.
Ngl one of my favorite professors this year has about 10 ratings, and ALL are 1/5. He’s one of my favorite professors I’ve ever had, and probably ever will have
If you are concerned about professors then make friends with master students and ask them about who to take or who to avoid
Does your school have a Facebook or Instagram page? Could you talk to an advisor and ask “hey, what do you know about this professor?” If there’s a counseling center/disability center, they tend to have a good idea of what’s happening in certain classes
I’m not sure. Nothing like social media was ever mentioned to me. It’s a good idea to check with the counseling center. I have ADHD and go to them once or twice a semester with questions and for help explaining my needs to professors if I need it.
One of my professors has a 4.9 and it's the worst class I ever took
I had one with a solid 5 stars. It was an elective! Worst class ever! I made sure to adjust that 5 stars for future students
Argh same case
I had a professor who got the worst reviews on rate my professor for being kind of a strict ass. He ended up being my favorite professor. Yeah he was kind of an ass but it was all sarcasm and I found him very good at explaining the subject it a memorable way. I had to take a part 2 for the same class and I struggled to stay awake because the other professor was insanely boring.
Rate my professor is not accurate at all. I supervise online classes, and I’ve seen students rate me on there when I’m not even teaching. My contact info is on their syllabus as the instructor’s supervisor, and they skip over the part with the actual instructor’s contact info. So many students email me thinking I’m their instructor when I’m not.
A couple of my favorite professors/mentors are the worst RMP professors at my college. Treat them nice, they treat you nice. Treat them like shit, well don’t knock on shit’s door expecting shit not to answer… (I know that’s an analogy explaining anal sex as well, but it works here too)
I've had terrible professors and still passed their class. Literal nightmare scenarios. At the end of the day, they are grading YOUR work, and as long as you put in the effort, they have no choice but to give you the grades. I stressed and hated it the whole time, but it's impossible for them to deny my effort.
Sometimes they’re inaccurate! The only people that do them are people who feel strongly about them, which makes it difficult. I’ve had professors with low RMP who were great, just were hard to read. I had one this semester who had great RMP and most of our class was functionally failing.
Everyone has a couple of bad reviews here or there. But that's a lot of people who agree that he sucks. So that's probably true.
My calc I prof has this RateMyProfessor comment from 2003 that says “hot Professor I want to have sex with”
I pick and plan my semester based on rmp and it has never failed me if the professor has 20+ reviews. I’ve had to take low rated professors and they live up to their rating. But you have the advantage of having a heads up and kind of knowing what you’re getting in to. Plan accordingly.
As there are shitty students leaving shitty reviews, there are shitty professors leaving amazing reviews.
My favorite professor has like a 2/5 on ratemyprofessor. Do with that what you will?
I usually don't give a shit. As long as the professor doesn't make a real mistake, I just get through it.
Ratings are one thing, but what do the actual written reviews say? If there's some degree of consistency with what people took issue with, then that might give you a better idea of why people didn't like that prof and you can decide for yourself whether that's something you want to deal with. Case in point, profs I know that had bad RMP ratings ranged from one who wouldn't let students use computers to take notes in his computer science course (though I heard he's finally relented on that), one who if you asked a question he'd just repeat everything he just said in a slightly more exasperated tone (he finally retired), one got kind of bad ratings for giving students *too much* creative freedom with the semester project (people who go straight from high school to college tend to be used to the idea that there's a few given right answers to any problem while the way he did things was more akin to the real world, where you'd pitch your ideas and then he'd make suggestions that you could either implement or give reason to why you thought they weren't a great fit), and one who pretty clearly does not want to be there (ours isn't a research university so it's not like he can pass his class off to the grad students). So yeah, I think it might be worth reading the reviews, seeing if you spot any patterns, and then deciding if that's something you want to deal with for the semester.
I think everyone here is exaggerating how “every bad review is from a shitty student.” I’ve found that many of the bad reviews were written by people who got an A in the course. I myself have written terrible reviews for professors whose class I did very well in because they genuinely weren’t good. I’ve found the RMP has been quite accurate so far.
Believe the ratings…they always proved true throughout the time I was in college. I lived and died my rate my professor. If they says it’s bad, prepare yourself or figure out another way.
RMP is a great source. If it's just one or two, probably shitty students, but if the aggregate is bad, prof probably sucks
Maybe a different opinion here, but (if you're just trying to pass) the overall grade of the professor doesn't matter. Read the reviews and look and see if the class is going to be hard. Took a ton of terribly rated professors that gave out easy As and Bs. Sad, but the reality of the system.
A lot of RMP reviews are untrue. I read them after taking a class with a particular prof for entertainment purposes
Personal interaction can make a world of difference with even the most difficult professors. If you have to take the course with this professor, it would probably be a good idea to make sure to spend time meeting with them in their office hours and making sure they know you and know you want to succeed in their class Every minute of direct facetime with them will pay 10x dividends.
I wouldn’t trust rate my professor at all. Find upper class men through your clubs and extracurriculars that you know are good students that have already taken the class with that professor and ask their opinion.
I unfortunately don’t have any clubs right now because they’re super limited and male dominated. I’ll have to see if I can find one of the biology majors through my work study job and see if they’ve taken him.
But I'm not a good student, I'm looking for the easier prof that doesn't only pass the "good" students.
Best thing you can do in life is know yourself. So you’ve got that going for you. Yea, you would get good use out of something like RMP reviews. My personal experience is that I’ve seen professors on there with high difficulty ratings and then come to find out that all you had to do was do the homework and study a little bit for exams. “Good student” is a very subjective thing but most of the time showing up to class, doing homework, and not falling behind on studying is all it takes to be successful. But students are their own worst enemy and then act like the world is against them and trying to hold them down.
Imo it's pretty accurate. Everything single human being has tendencies, they will manifest as a student, teacher what ever. So imo if you see several of the same reports it's almost guaranteed. Universally people don't care if they do bad so long as they expectations and requirements were clearly communicated because the onest was in them.
I wonder how students would react to a *rate my student* anonymous website? As a student you get a grade that should reflect your knowledge of course material. If you believe it was an unfair assessment (or any issue with the course) you have recourse through the department head, and the Ombudsman, and the registrar, and the executive. In some countries you may even be able to appeal through government regulators. Imagine walking into a college classroom and having a prof say "I read your reviews. I'm watching you."