My favorite professors are all rated 4.5 or higher, and my least favorites are rated 3.0 or lower; ones I’d rate in between are commonly rated higher than my favorites, but it contains substantially greater than 0 information relative to my school. Apparently YMMV!
I would guess talking to TAs or other same-major students is going to get most LWers a more useful perspective than RMP, but website reviews are still better than nothing.
Only detailed reviews. If you don’t know what the criteria are, they can easily be worse—counting as negative a factor you would consider positive, for example.
I would suggest that if you know nothing about the rating system, it is still likely to positively correlate because of universal factors like speaking clearly. In the case of RMP, I’d suggest that you’d expect an even better correlation because easiness and attractiveness are asked about separately. It’s still possible for this not to work out because of what you suggest, but it seems less likely to me on average.
I think RMP is more for undergrads who want to coast through their degree with the least amount of effort.
RMP is also very useful if you want to sign-up for classes taught by attractive professors. I like to have something nice to look at while not doing course-work, lol!
I agree with you, I was just trying to help magfrump.
On a lark I looked at my favorite professors (that is, the ones I felt taught me the most) and all of them have ratings below 3.0.
I think RMP is more for undergrads who want to coast through their degree with the least amount of effort. (This makes a certain amount of sense.)
My favorite professors are all rated 4.5 or higher, and my least favorites are rated 3.0 or lower; ones I’d rate in between are commonly rated higher than my favorites, but it contains substantially greater than 0 information relative to my school. Apparently YMMV!
I would guess talking to TAs or other same-major students is going to get most LWers a more useful perspective than RMP, but website reviews are still better than nothing.
Only detailed reviews. If you don’t know what the criteria are, they can easily be worse—counting as negative a factor you would consider positive, for example.
I would suggest that if you know nothing about the rating system, it is still likely to positively correlate because of universal factors like speaking clearly. In the case of RMP, I’d suggest that you’d expect an even better correlation because easiness and attractiveness are asked about separately. It’s still possible for this not to work out because of what you suggest, but it seems less likely to me on average.
RMP is also very useful if you want to sign-up for classes taught by attractive professors. I like to have something nice to look at while not doing course-work, lol!
I agree with you, I was just trying to help magfrump.