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The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

    Rate My Professors helps class scheduling

    During this time in  the semester when advising rolls around, I am faced with the struggle of choosing which professors to take. 

    From my experience even if two professors are teaching the same class, their syllabi, assignments and teaching styles may be completely different. So how do I decide which professor to take and ensure the best outcome for my GPA? 

    How do I find out which professors from the departments on campus give bonus and have great testing styles? Therein lies the dilemma. How do I know which professor’s class will be best suited for my learning needs so that I can get a good grade? There are a few ways I usually go about picking classes. First I message all of my friends at the university to see if they’ve taken a professor and ask them for their opinions on them. I also ask people from my department for advice on professors and classes. Asking a graduate assistant or upperclassman who can give you the real talk on a professor is always useful. But the online tool that many of the university’s students use to review professors before signing up for their classes is Rate My Professors. 

    Rate My Professors is an online resource where students can search reviews of professors at many universities in the U.S. and read reviews about their teaching styles and even get as specific as reviews on certain classes they teach. I believe this website is an excellent resource for information on potential professors. Before signing up for and committing to a course that will be extremely difficult because you had no idea how difficult the professor’s class would be when there are other options, and your luck just ran out win you picked the wrong course to add to your cart on Moodle. This website has helped me avoid that by offering useful insight into professors’ teaching methods. Students give ratings to professors on overall quality, if students would take that instructor again, level of difficulty and if something that does not really affect one’s academics but is just a fun tidbit of information, the professor’s “hotness” rating. Rate My Professors is excellent for a basic overview of potential professors for the class you’re looking to take. I find it a useful resource, but I also take the reviews written on the website with a grain of salt because I do not know the type of people writing the reviews and what they might hate about a professor. I feel that many on this site might not be on the same intellectual level that I am. I think that people who write reviews on the site are very astute, serious students who are probably smarter than me, so when a reviewer says that a professor’s class is “so easy,” I have to consider that what they think is easy might be rocket science for me. I prefer to start selecting a professor by looking at the general opinions of professors then trying to find opinions on that teacher from people I know and whose opinions I trust. I prefer to ask insight on professors from people I know and only really use Rate My Professors as a springboard into my search for the perfect professor. Using the advice of people whose personalities and study habits I know, I can get a better grasp on how I would do taking that professor’s class. 

    I think Rate My Professors is an excellent source for college students and should definitely be checked out if they have difficulty on deciding on a professor, but I advise using caution when relying on Rate My Professors to make a judgment on a professor’s teaching style. Read reviews on the website with an open mind while scheduling classes because just because someone commented online does not mean you should 100 percent take their advice.

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