The end of the semester is just on the tip of the horizon. It’s so close you can almost taste your celebration drinks. But, hold up! There’s some major housekeeping that needs to be done, and that my friends, is registration. Whether registering for summer or fall courses, ISIS has been bombarded with many trying to sort out their lives—at least for a semester. Although tailoring your schedule to what you may think is an acceptable time to get out of bed, other factors obviously have to be taken into account—like the professor. Boosting help with your research for a Cinderella-fit of a schedule is the ever so reliable Rate My Professors Web site.
Providing students from more than 6,500 schools an excess of 10,000,000 student ratings of more than a million professors, mtvU’s Ratemyprofessors.com has proven itself to be the perfect staple of insider information. Professors are rated on clarity, helpfulness, easiness, overall quality and hotness – represented by a fiery red chili pepper.
“Rate My Professors does what students have done throughout time. But now they have a larger scale of opportunity to tap into a bigger pool of wisdom and opinions to formulate their decisions on,” said Carlo DiMarco, vice president of University Relations for mtvU.
The site recently released its “top 25” lists for 2009-2010 to give light to the highest ranked universities, junior colleges and professors. Topping the list of the “Top 25 Universities with the Highest Rated Professors” was Southeastern Louisiana University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Brigham Young University.
However, the Sunshine State did much better in the rankings of the “Top 25 Junior Colleges with Highest Rated Professors” with Florida Community College at Jacksonville and Tallahassee Community College rounding out the top three.
Getting more of an eye-candy rating were those professors that made it onto the “Top 25 Hottest Professors” list. Juann Watson, professor psychology at Kingsborough Community College, proved to be the steamiest.
“Believe it or not, a lot of professors check their ratings. When the professors found out that they made one of the lists they were thrilled and excited. It gives them a bit of a semi-celebrity status,” DiMarco said.
UF has three separate sections on the Rate My Professors site including one for the Levin College of Law as well as the College of Veterinary Medicine. Gators have chimed in on more than 3,300 of the UF’s professors.
UF assistant professor in the political science department, Marcus Hendershot, has 32 ratings on ratemyprofessors.com and has yet to check them.
“I don’t look at it, but family members give me a hard time about it every once in a while,” Hendershot said. “The service is not a representative sample in any shape or form, but I guess it allows students to blow off steam after grades post. I would much rather have students post rants on a Web site than have them engage in harmful activity (for example, either to a faculty member or to themselves).”
However, some professors aren’t too thrilled with their online ratings, and Rate My Professors gave them a chance to sound off on some of their harsh reviews. Professors Strike Back, an online video series, showcases videos of professors directly responding to comments made about them on ratemyprofessors.com.
“We thought the one piece that may have been missing was the professor’s side. This was a cool way to put a fun prospective on it,” DiMarco said.
In the series, professors directly address student feedback in “Professor Rebuttals.” Professor Andrew Tomasello, of Baruch College, responds to a rating he received suggesting he was “mean not cool” by dropping some friendly F-bombs in response.
So, be sure to be careful with your ratings when you rate your professor at ratemyprofessors.com.
