by Marco Ovies, Features Editor
RateMyProfessor is a website long-time students may be familiar with. But for anyone unfamiliar, it’s a site where students can leave reviews on professors they’ve had a class with. It asks students to fill in what class they took with the professor, discuss technical aspects of the course, and if they would take the class again. Each review is accompanied by two scores out of five. One for the professor and one for the overall difficulty of the class. Generally, it’s a great resource if you’re struggling to figure out which classes to take. But while these ratings are a good starting point, it is important to remember they are not the most accurate and should not be your only deciding factor on which classes to take.
For starters, I’ve personally taken classes where the reviews online do not reflect the professor at all. One of my all-time favourite professors in the English program only has a measly 3.3 rating while other professors with higher ratings (who I will not name so I don’t get in trouble) have taught classes I absolutely hated.
Actually, many professors in the English department have ratings in the 3.0 range. If you scan through the comments, the biggest complaint is usually that there are too many readings. As an English student, I did not think any of these professors assigned an absurd amount of readings which leads me to believe most of these reviews are students outside of the English department. A business student is obviously going to rate an English course differently than another student in the English program. The same way that I would absolutely trash STAT 100 which I took as a quantitative course and still have stress dreams about.
Unfortunately, RateMyProfessor has no way for users to input what program they belong to. Furthermore, there is no actual verification process to ensure you have taken the class you’re reviewing or if you even are an SFU student. Meaning any random person living anywhere in the world can go online and leave a negative review. Now you’re probably thinking “who would do this?” But as someone who has worked in customer service and received numerous phone calls about people pretending to be “stuck in the washroom,” I would not be surprised.
This is all to say, people all have their own opinions and beliefs which will influence their reviews. Someone who sides with more right-wing politics might find a specific professor too progressive and give them a lower rating. Also, different professors have been teaching for different amounts of time and reviews cannot always accurately reflect this. A professor has the opportunity to look through this feedback and change their teaching methods accordingly, but I found reviews dating back to 2002. If there aren’t many students reviewing a professor, these old negative reviews may be reducing their score for years to come even if they have improved.
While RateMyProfessor is a good place to see what people think of professors, it should not be your only determining factor. I would suggest asking people you know in your department for their opinions on professors. These people will have a better understanding of what taking a class in your department is like and will most likely give you a more honest review.
