For anyone that has never heard of this website I HIGHLY recommend it. This website has reviews of most of the professors at all the colleges in the US. This is where the students get a chance to give the professors a grade.
Getting a tough grading professor or one that is a bad teacher, can bring down your grade a notch or two. For myself, I found four good professors for my Gen Chemistry, Bio class, and the two labs.
Do not get me wrong, I am not looking for a easy professor … I am looking for a fair professor that teaches well. Do yourself a favor and give yourself the best chance by getting a good teacher.
http://ratemyprofessors.com/
Do be careful of that site - as with any other website it is important to take the information with a healthy dose of reality.
Ratemyprofessor.com does not log IP addresses nor does it require unique logins or track multiple postings.
I actually ran into a class where the temp adjunct lecturer was buffing up his profile by repeatedly posting ridiculously overblown praise for himself. In the process he would also rate himself the best and thus skew the averages to a misleading number. He was doing this because he was hired seasonally on contract based on how many students enrolled in the class.
The slew of praise would always come either right before he was about to teach a class or right after he was done…and it was always botched with the same Spanglish he used during his lectures!
My first quarter I had a teacher who was poorly rated on that site. He was mean, hated women, tough grader. I received a 4.0 both times I took him. He taught me a lot and the class was a joy.
I then read about a chemistry teacher that was kind, excellent, easy grader, really knew his material. I received a “B/B+” out of his class. I was a wreck every time there was a test. He was good, but, for whatever reason I always felt like I had gaps in my understanding of important concepts.
I have a different chemistry teacher this quarter. She received average, luke-warm ratings. She is excellent…for me and my learning style. I feel so good about this quarter.
So, while I still take a look at that site, I take it with a grain of salt. There are lazy, vengeful students out there that don’t want to do the work and are angry about receiving their earned grade.
I definitely use ratemyprofessor.com. But also keep in mind that only 10-15% get A’s. As long as I see 2-3 “good” reviews out of 10 reviews, I’m okay.
I love that site, I myself always remain a tiny skeptical because sometimes you have students who just wanna be jerks, I looked up my sociology teacher for this semester and it had a few terrible things as well as okay things said about him, so I’m keeping an open mind until I meet him for myself. But again I love the site!!!
There are those students that are lazy and post bad reviews, and I try to weed them out of the equation. However, if there are a lot reviews that are negative, then I will look for another professor.
Grain of salt. Right?
Amen!
Ignore the advice on ratemyprofessor at your own risk! After almost a year of using it, I started taking it with a grain of salt (which you should). I went ahead and ignored the mixed advice about a professor thinking it was typical 18-year-old undergrad sniveling and sour grapes.
That professor was so bad, I was literally blown away. I have no idea how he managed to retain his job. He would ridicule students, yell at them, and otherwise behave in a childish fashion. I managed an A-, by keeping my mouth shut and going to office hours regularly (to find out what he wanted - as “correct” answers were simply his opinion) and just sucking it up when it was my turn for abuse.
If there is a professor with red flags, go ahead and take them if you must but be ready for the worst!
Enjoy the luxury of being able to choose the professors from whom you’ll take courses while you have it…med school changes that completely and you get the professor they appoint to do the job. And let’s just say, not all physicians and Ph.D.'s have the skill set of an effective educator. 