Aysha Bader | Mercury Staff
One month into the new semester, Comets’ incoming expectations about their classes and professors formed through websites like Rate My Professors have been affirmed, challenged or complicated. Despite occasional discrepancies between the website’s ratings and students’ actual experiences, UTD students overwhelmingly use and trust Rate My Professors, marking its importance and indispensability within students’ class selection process.
Rate My Professors, which allows students to read and leave reviews about their college professors’ teaching ability and course difficulty, is the most widely used professor review site, receiving over 11 million views in August 2024. In a survey conducted by The Mercury which polled 13UTD students, 80% of respondents said they have used Rate My Professors before. Additionally, all of those that use it reported that they would recommend the site to others; however, answers varied when it came to Rate My Professors’ accuracy.
Criminology freshman Mashal Natha said students cannot rely on Rate My Professors’ ratings alone and instead must read through the reviews, which she said were “very accurate.” She also said that while it can be a helpful tool, it can also be misleading.
“There was this … cognitive science class … there [were] a few mixed reviews, and I was told there was gonna be a lot of work and boring lectures,” Natha said. “But then I [realized] a lot of [the reviews are] dependent on the person’s personal interests. The things the teacher was actually saying were understandable for people who were in that major.”
Public health freshman Mahveen Zafar said to take the site with a grain of salt.
“Last year, I was taking Calculus and this teacher … was one of the only good rated Calculus professors,” Zafar said. “His teaching was not good because he would just ramble on about something that has nothing to do with calculus.”
While Rate My Professors is a useful tool for students to decide on their upcoming schedules, the way the site functions can lead to the spread of inaccurate information. Psychology senior Jasha Dela Cruz has experienced both ends of Rate My Professors as both a student and a class leader teaching an introductory freshman course as part of her campus job. Dela Cruz said reviews can be extreme at times and don’t give a true consensus of a professors’ instructional ability.
“Read the reviews and make sure that those are not biased,” Dela Cruz said. “Sometimes, the [students] that write the comments are the ones that had really strong feelings about their professors.”
Dela Cruz said that when students have expectations about a professor or class, it affects their behavior and learning experience, creating a self-fulfilling cycle. Despite this risk, however, Dela Cruz said the site is invaluable for gauging public opinion.
“It is honestly one of the most helpful tools,” Dela Cruz said. “Not only do I get to know the professor based on the student point of view, it prepares me to figure out my class schedule for next semesters.”