Rate My Professor has taken on a head of its own and it has taken a turn for the worse.
The website was founded in 1999 by a student that wanted to let other students voice their opinions about the professors that are on their campuses.
It has over 8, 000 schools and over 1, 000, 000 reviews on the site, with most of it’s traffic coming from the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
It grades the professor on a scale from one to five on: easiness, clarity, helpfulness, overall and attractiveness.
However, this site has provided a nesting ground for people that have posted information that is completely irrelevant for student learning.
The chili pepper next to the name has to be the most worthless part of the site.
Every “hot” rating is consider a point and every “not” is considered a negative point.
If the points added up are a positive number, then the professor is given a chili pepper.
Whether or not your professor is attractive in not important for your college career.
Another aspect, is that many of the times students will only post something if they had an incredibly positive or negative experience.
So one rating can completely sway the score of a professor that does not have many ratings.
While there are genuine ratings on the site, a couple of negative responses can stop you from taking a class that you really need to earn your degree.
An online site, should not be the reason that you did not want to take a class and you had to push your graduation back a semester.
Many of the negative comments involve the professor giving out too much homework or having difficult exams.
Everyone wants to take the easiest professor possible, but that can’t always be the case.
Sure more assignments and exams means that you are going to have to put in more work for the class, but that can only help you when it comes to your future.
Everything that is after Cerritos College is not going to be easy, so going through these classes can just prepare you for the work force or that university that you want to transfer to.
Now taking difficult professors just for the challenge is not recommended either, but having some now and then should not be a problem.
Rate My Professor has set the grounds for a new system that could be put into play.
Colleges should have their own rating system, so that the student body of the campus can be able to rate their professors.
Cerritos College has surveys for the students, but none of that information is given out to the public.
All of this would help the college look at it self as a whole and give the students the information that they are looking for through Rate My Professor.
