Ratemyprofessor.com is unreliable

We are barely a month away from returning to classes and facing the professors we hand-selected to teach us some of the most difficult subjects our school offers.

After reading pages and pages of reviews on Ratemyprofessors.comhttp://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ CQ MV, we are sure we picked the right person to spend the next semester with. He doesn’t assign lot of homework, no pop-quizzes and all the exams are online.

However, as many of us have experienced, these reviews aren’t always reliable. Ratemyproffesors.com said the class was easy, but perhaps the teacher wants you to buy $400 worth of study material.

There are several reasons as to why these reviews are unreliable, but here are just a few.

1) It attracts extremists

Think about the kind of person who goes out of their way to fill out reviews or surveys. In this case, the student writing the review either did really, really well in the class, or did really, really badly. Ratemyprofessors.com tends to have no in between reviews, leaving it up to you to decide which side of the story you believe.

2) The number of reviews

How many reviews would you have to read to be convinced of the general consensus? Some professors only have four or five reviews, while others have 20 to 30. Most of the professors at USC teach between 30 and 130 students per class, so what makes you think those 30 reviews are an accurate representation of how that professor teaches?

3) Professors have different specialties

Ratemyprofessors.com gives people the option of reading reviews on the specific class they are about to take. However, teachers that teach upper level classes tend to teach some lower level classes as well, leading students to believe that the lower level classes may be as difficult or easy as the upper level classes, or visa versa. Also, teachers have different specialties and may take those classes more seriously than others.

4) Professors learn their lessons

Over time, teachers learn what works and what does not work with their students. If a professor does not take attendance one semester but then realizes no one comes to class, they may start to give pop quizzes the next semester or even start to take attendance. Choosing a class because you find the class format appealing is always a bad idea because these formats are always subject to change.

5) Professors have access to Ratemyprofessors.com too

Many professors will check their Ratemyprofessors.com profile just to see what people are saying about them. But many of them will check to see what they need to change. As I was saying in #4, class format and rules are always subject to change, especially if the professor was not quite satisfied with his or her reviews.

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