Students peruse potential professor ratings

By Elissa Norton, Staff Writer -- norton11@up.edu

"My chili pepper is on fire!" psychology Professor Deana Julka said as she looked at her profile on RateMyProfessors.com. "As a mom of three and just turning 40, it's good. It's better than the alternative."

RateMyProfessors.com, a website that allows students to research reviews of professors teaching particular courses, consists of categories ranging from overall quality, helpfulness, clarity, easiness and, for better or worse, "hotness," represented by the metaphorical chili pepper.

Julka is just one of the many UP professors with a chili pepper. But she is one of the few with her a chili pepper "on fire." It is no surprise to her, however.

"Every semester I get a marriage proposal on the evaluations," Julka, who also gets high marks on the site for helpfulness and clarity, said.

Marriage proposals aside, UP students who use RateMyProfessors.com go there primarily for information on the teaching-related categories, as well as comments from the professor's former students.

"If all the comments are sad faces, I won't even consider the professor," senior Melissa Ringe said.

Not that she considers everything on the site reliable.

According to both Julka and Ringe, review sites such as RateMyProfessors.com have to be taken with a grain of salt because the most vocal students are the ones who leave extreme comments, either positive or negative.

"I looked at the comments and it's usually a personal problem the student had with the professor," Ringe said.

While Ringe now relies more on word of mouth to learn about professors, she thinks rating websites can be useful.

"I used the site my freshman and sophomore year because I didn't know the professors and wanted to know how nice they are, clear and easy to understand," Ringe said.

Senior Lauren Adkins agreed that word of mouth is more reliable. She used RateMyProfessors.com to find professors who have teaching styles that match her learning styles.

"The site helped to find which professors I want to take classes from and some professors have a specific style of teaching that may not work with how I learn, so I know not to take them," Adkins said.

According to Adkins, the overall ratings are pretty accurate, but the comments are more important to read through.

"I always look at the comments because the ratings don't necessarily give you a good idea of the professor," Adkins said. "RateMyProfessors.com and word of mouth are pretty similar and consistent in terms of comments about professors."

Unlike Ringe, Adkins has posted a comment on a professor's profile.

"I only posted a comment because the professor had one comment and I completely disagreed with the negative comment a professor had," Adkins said. She posted when she was a student at Seattle University.

Perusing her profile and comments, Julka emphasized why professors don't use the site as avidly as students might.

"It's interesting to see how the comments change," Julka said. "After teaching 14 years, I would hope it would reflect the evolution and growth."

According to Julka, professors place more importance on the semester evaluations than websites like RateMyProfessors.com because they are a better reflection of what the students think.

Perhaps because students cannot view these evaluations, they flock to sites such as RateMyProfessors.com, even if they're not entirely reliable.

"I had professors with average ratings that I really enjoyed and learned a lot from," Ringe said.

As for "hotness," it has never factored into deciding which professor to take, according to Adkins.

"If the professor is hot, it's just an added bonus," Adkins said.