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Is using RatemyProfessors taking the easy way out?

post #1 of 34
8/23/09 at 11:39pm
Thread Starter 
Many of my friends will only sign up for classes that have easy professors. They'll just go on that website to only find the easiest professors for the course they are taking. It's good for their GPA, but are they only hurting themselves?
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post #2 of 34
8/23/09 at 11:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by KanYe View Post
Many of my friends will only sign up for classes that have easy professors. They'll just go on that website to only find the easiest professors for the course they are taking. It's good for their GPA, but are they only hurting themselves?

I find that most of the people who post on that site are dumb pieces of shit. The sort of people I would never be friends with, or even talk to.

I don't care if kids want easy professors and to coast through their "education". What really pisses me off is the kids that say the professor is a bad teacher because they are difficult, or expect them to read/study.

These kids treat college like it's Taco Bell.
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post #3 of 34
8/23/09 at 11:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by KanYe View Post
Many of my friends will only sign up for classes that have easy professors. They'll just go on that website to only find the easiest professors for the course they are taking. It's good for their GPA, but are they only hurting themselves?

They are missing something. Whether that is something they can find at their current institution and degree course of study is another question. Some situations are so intrinsically mediocre that the best way out is the quick and easy way.
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post #4 of 34
8/23/09 at 11:51pm
If you're looking for easy classes then... yes it is. But what I don't understand is how you find them by easiness. Is there some sort of scale that lists all professors by how easy they are?

RMP and similar sites are just good references to look up on. Obviously some people leave pretty inaccurate or shallow reviews but you just have to be able to read what the reviews are really saying. It's not hard to toss out a few bad ones/good ones if they stand out as it obviously being the student's fault.

hamish seems to have lot's of anger because there's plenty of reviewers who leave honest reviews that can be pretty useful.
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post #5 of 34
8/24/09 at 12:11am
I post there sometimes. To date, I've given two poor reviews and many positive ones, including two outstanding reviews. I try to be honest and not let personal issues enter in if negative. I absolutely feel that choosing 'easy' professors will cheat you of the best of learning. My favorite and best Profs invariably had strong negative and strong positive reviews -- not only were they in challenging subjects, but they demanded quality work while giving quality instruction. Those Profs were often heavily invested in teaching, per se. The variation in reviews tends to hinge not only on the Prof, but also how challenging the material is ratioed against the degree to which the reviewer wants to be there (required classes in challenging subjects is a tough beat for any Prof). However, if a certain Prof has a large number of strongly negative reviews and no strongly positive reviews (mediocre at best) I would be less than motivated to choose that class. In engineering, that would signal to me that perhaps this Prof was a reasearcher who had to teach to perform his reasearch, and wasn't good at it or vested in it. It does happen -- but far less frequently than capricious students presume. ~ H
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post #6 of 34
8/24/09 at 12:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lel View Post
hamish seems to have lot's of anger

sigged for truth.

I just feel, in my experience, on the site, that the kids who post most are the kind whose opinions I don't care about. The sort of kids that drink Miller.
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post #7 of 34
8/24/09 at 12:32am
Well information of any kind is only as useful as you make it and you learn to mentally toss out the bad reviews. While I do see reviews like you describe, I don't think they make up the majority of reviews on the site and just because a few posters are dumb doesn't make the entire site itself worthless. To be honest though, I never thought about using it to find classes based on easiness. If I wanted that, I'd ask people I know personally about the classes they took. I look at it when I have to pick a teacher for a subject and it comes down between multiple choices, yes I will go with the one I interpret to be a better teacher. PS: I drink Miller but not out of choice, what does that mean?
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post #8 of 34
8/24/09 at 12:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lel View Post
PS: I drink Miller but not out of choice, what does that mean?

I'll get back to you on that one.
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post #9 of 34
8/24/09 at 12:55am
Seems kind of useless, but I've always been in a position to pick classes by need and time, rather than just going whenever.

The best professor I ever had was an elderly semiotician (she got her PhD in 1950) who had a RMP/general rep of being a hardass. And she was less than nice to obvious slackers (oh, the time 2/3 of class hadn't done the reading). But if you were making an effort, she worked with you - which has been the case with every other professor, IME - and could teach you more about critical theory than anyone else at the university. I'll take the hardass who lived through every theory era of the latter half of the 20th century over a third year adjunct who wants to be my buddy.
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post #10 of 34
8/24/09 at 1:03am
I have used the site but I have had some teachers that were easy and I learned a lot from, some that were challenging that I learned a lot from, some that were easy and I retained nothing, and some that were challenging and just straight up assholes. Generally I have found the site to be helpful but it wasn't the only thing I took into consideration when making my schedules. I also had instances of signing up for teachers and actually get different teachers because of staffing changes and etc. A lot of my absolute favorite professors didn't even require a text and I think I learned the most from them. One or two of them may have even made enough of an impression on me to cause some life changes. O, the joys of college.
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post #11 of 34
8/24/09 at 1:18am
90% of my professors have been obnoxious and full of shit not to mention pretentious and have this special sense of entitlement. I don't need rate my professor to know some asshole will be teaching me.. my university seems to be making sure of that. It's one of the reasons I stopped taking social science/art electives... on one hand I don't get to take advantage of the electives and boost my GPA with bird courses outside of my math degree, but on the other hand I don't have to listen to some fool jabber on about socialism and his outlook on society like I give a fuck... instead I can take a science from some guy who doesn't give a fuck whether I learn or not and certainly doesn't want to inspire me with bullshit. This doesn't have anything to do with OP's question; I just enjoy a good rant and I have had a bad run with profs.
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post #12 of 34
8/24/09 at 1:24am
Ratemyprofessor is great... but not for what you're using it for. I used it in undergrad to schedule electives, I just based it on what profs people said were really good, engaging, entertaining lecturers. It worked like a charm, I took some of my favourite classes that way.
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post #13 of 34
8/24/09 at 2:17am
I dont know what I would do without it. The first semester I started using it, I looked up an old professor from the previous year and read dam near 60+ bad reviews. Had I known about the website beforehand, I could have avoided him.

Students make it pretty clear in their reviews if the professor is bad or simply difficult. I've also found that professors who do not like the site generally have something they want to hide.

Anyone who had to take any economics or math course will tell you the site is invaluable for avoiding professors who can't speak or understand english. The worst I ever read was something like "I'm Chinese, and even I cant understand this guy."
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post #14 of 34
8/24/09 at 2:27am
Quote:
The sort of kids that drink Miller.
some of us go to state schools, miller works fine for the type of drinking we do *Edit for substance/opinion* yes it is the easy way out, and i mean that in the worst way possible. my friend has used it from the beginning and i can honestly that i have had a much better classroom experience, he always went for the easy prof. regardless of who was "good" i didnt really use it to my benefit because my sis went through the same program 2 years before. i would always have her recommend profs. i would think that most students have access to this type of resource, which is imo, much better than an online thing with a bunch of rdms
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post #15 of 34
8/24/09 at 2:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reggs View Post
I dont know what I would do without it. The first semester I started using it, I looked up an old professor from the previous year and read dam near 60+ bad reviews. Had I known about the website beforehand, I could have avoided him.

Students make it pretty clear in their reviews if the professor is bad or simply difficult. I've also found that professors who do not like the site generally have something they want to hide.

Anyone who had to take any economics or math course will tell you the site is invaluable for avoiding professors who can't speak or understand english. The worst I ever read was something like "I'm Chinese, and even I cant understand this guy."

Any of the reviews that have 50+ with one faction of response should be taken with some stock IMO. I do use the site occasionally to see if the prof uses attendance as marks, speaks english (invaluable as a math student) or has lots of assignments but I see some with 1 review in the negative and wonder how anyone could take that as bond.
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