Wondering if your statistics professor next semester is as toughas you’ve heard? Should you take that extra biology course?
Log on to RateMyProfessors.com, a Web site that lets users seewhat others have to say about professors on campus and allows them toleave their own opinions.
The site’s goal is to help students get through their collegecareers with minimal pain. It allows students to rate theirprofessors — on a scale of one to five — based on their clarity,helpfulness and easiness.
Helpfulness refers to a teacher’s approachability, theirpersonality and if they are willing to make special arrangements tohelp students. Clarity is how well the teacher conveys the classtopic, their organization, effectiveness of class time and theclarity of lectures.
These two categories are calculated into the overall rating. Thecategory of easiness is not included because it could mean either theprofessor or the course is easy.
Based on these results, professors are given a “smiley face,””neutral face” or “unhappy face” next to their name.
Students can also say if their professor is sexy or not. The”sexiness” vote, denoted by a chili pepper, came about becausefounder John Swapceinski wanted to reduce the number of writtencomments about professors’ appearance.
Swapceinski said he was prompted to start the site after he had an”unfair” professor at San Jose State. He said he wished someone hadwarned him about the professor’s unrealistic expectations.
San Diego State has almost 400 professors listed on the Web sitesince its initiation onto the Internet in Spring 2001.
“When people say it’s not statistically valid, they’re completelyright — it’s really a big collection of opinions,” Swapceinski said.
He said there is room for error, but there are safeguards inplace. Swapceinski checks ratings 24 hours after they’re posted toweed out mistakes, resubmissions and libelous statements.
“I thought there would be a lot more negative ratings thanpositive, but that’s not true, at least for most of the schools –about 60 percent positive and 40 percent negative,” Swapceinski said.
Many professors on campus say the site is a good source ofinformation for students, but students should be aware of the biases.
“The problem with these kinds of polls is that they don’t capturethe entire class; they capture the people who really like you, or thepeople who really hate you,” accounting professor Gary Grudnitskisaid. “You can get some pretty distorted results.”
Business law professor Russell Block, who had varying ratings,said the site could be useful as long as the reader understands thesource of the results.
Political science professor Ric Epps said he takes the opinions onthe site “with a grain of salt.”
“You will have people who will love you because they like yourstyle and people who will hate you because they don’t like yourstyle,” he said.
Sociology junior Jennifer Cady said she would check the site outto see if her professor was on it, but would also take intoconsideration the various biases. It would depend on the class if shewanted an easy or difficult professor; if it was a math class shewould expect the professor to be difficult, she said.
“Hopefully, we’re not here for popularity or beauty,” Grudnitskisaid. “I always feel you ought to choose the professors that wouldhelp you learn best, not the easiest and definitely not the sexiest.”
