Students weigh the benefits of Rate My Professors
Julio Rodriguez
Junior Creative Editor
Many students go to Rate My Professors to find highly-rated instructors based on ratings from other Hudson Valley students.
Liberal arts student Aubrey Brimmer said, “I use [Rate My Professors] to figure out which professors were rated better than others and to see if I should maybe change my schedule accordingly to the better professors.”
There are a vast array of ratings for professors on the site. The website provides comments, and numerical ratings made by students. The ratings are based on a scale of one-to-five. The average score is 3.76 for all of the professors at Hudson Valley.
Students hold the comments in high regard, using the website to ensure they will be successful in their classes.
“I only used [Rate My Professors] once, but that was only because I heard that this teacher was hard, so I checked to see if it was true,” said liberal arts student Saaleha Brown.
“I’ve heard from professors that they agree with the comments left about their colleagues. If professors are recommending it to us, then I think everyone should really check it out,” said Brimmer.
Professor of English, Linda Scoville, is one of the highest rated professors at Hudson Valley. She has a perfect score of five.
“I take it with a grain of salt. [The rating] is great, it makes me feel good, but that’s not what’s in my head when I’m teaching a class,” said Scoville.
Scoville does not teach to gain favoritism among her students, instead she teaches to help her students achieve a goal. “I want each student to fulfill his or her potential. Sometimes it means sitting down with people one-on-one, or extra time I’m willing to do that. I want people to gain confidence in their own skills and go from there,” said Scoville.
The website can be helpful to prospective students, however there is nothing stopping a student from giving an inadequate review of a professor. The fact that anyone can make comments, and give ratings, calls the website’s credibility into question.
“There might be students who resent a teacher because they scored badly, but that’s their bad, not the professor’s fault. I think for the most part it is pretty accurate,” said Brimmer.
Scoville also believes that students should be cautious when using the website. “I had a student that said his mom was a teacher, and he went into the site to put in negative comments about his own mom,” said Scoville.
Finding professor recommendations from others on campus is not always attainable. Brown said, “I never really looked to friends or recommendations for professors. I overheard a teacher talking about [Rate My Professor], so I decided to use it.”