Students Grade Profs
THE POPULAR WEB SITE RateMyProfessors.com presents more than 6 million student opinions about 1 million professors at 6,000 schools. But the site lists only 182 Dartmouth profs (compared to nearly 500 profs each from Brown and Columbia), none of whom are reviewed by more than eight students. Dartmouth's own course guide, run by Student Assembly (SA), is more complete, detailed and informative, with more than 26,000 student reviews posted. Prompts in the SA guide such as "Was paced too quickly" or "Gives effective lectures" provide much more useful and in-depth information about a professor than do RateMyProfessors.com's criteria of "easiness," "helpfulness," "clarity" and even "hotness," which students rate on a scale of 1 to 5. (Examples of Dartmouth professor ratings at both sites are listed below.)
Despite the popularity of RateMyProfessors.com nationally, I was happy sticking with the SA course guide when choosing classes. After all, "hotness" is not the most important quality I'm looking for in a professor.
STUDENT ASSEMBLY COURSE GUIDE RATINGS DEPARTMENT PROFESSOR # OF REVIEWS AVERAGE RATING Economics Bruce Sacerdote '90 6 A Comments: Insanely smart, understanding, not too difficult, makes it fun, loves his students, laid back, helpful outside of class Education Kimberly Williams 17 A Comments: Knowledgeable, experienced, personable, amazing, a lot of work, funny, fun, available outside class, good class discussion Russian Alfia Rakova 6 A Comments: Interesting, animated, made learning easy, engaging, demanding but helpful, fun, interesting, organized classes well Spanish & Portuguese Rebecca Biron 6 A Comments: Brilliant, approachable, demanding, smart, high expectations, fast paced, interactive, helpful, fair, fun Theater Kathleen Cunneen 6 A Comments: Relaxed, knowledgeable, time-consuming class, rewarding
RATEMYPROFESSORS.COM DEPARTMENT PROFESSOR # OF REVIEWS OVERALL QUALITY EASINESS HELPFULNESS CLARITY HOTNESS Anthropology Kamyar Abdi 5 4.9 2.4 5 4.8 4 Comments: Learned a lot, great class, awesome sense of humor, had a lot of fun, very smart, friendly, enthusiastic, helpful Computer Science Prasad Jayanti 6 4.7 3.2 4.7 4.7 4 Comments: Best professor I have had for any course, Prasad is one funky dude English Terry Osborne 6 4.8 3.3 4.8 4.8 2 Comments: He will push you to think more deeply about things you previously have not examined, committed to his students, passionate, challenging, out-of-the box strategies Philosophy Walter Sinnott-Armstrong 3 4.8 3 4.7 5 0 Comments: Very interesting man who makes class entertaining and informative, excellent professor Spanish & Portuguese Douglas Moody 4 5 4 5 Comments: Nice, willing to listen, will write a good recommendation
