By India Madsen, LA&PS Voices Editor
My hand was shaky as I clicked “enroll.” I was nervous because, as a fellow student had put it, enrolling in a class without reading the Rate My Professors reviews was like playing Russian Roulette. However, since the professor’s name had not yet been revealed on the course website and I needed the credit, I was left with no choice.
I later checked the professor’s page on Rate My Professors, only to find it was flooded with reviews ranging from mediocre to negative. The course turned out to be one of the best I had ever taken at York.
Nowadays, I don’t treat Rate My Professors like a magic 8 ball, as the authors can be quite biased. This is my guide to the different types of reviewers you’ll encounter on the Rate My Professor site.
The Reasonable One
This student is someone who you’d probably want to be friends with if you met in real life. Their advice is solid, trustworthy, and levelheaded. The reviews that they write tend to avoid all-caps and personal attacks on the professor. Instead, they tell you about the coursework, the professor’s turnaround time on emails, and the prevalence of pop quizzes.
How many grains of salt should this advice be taken with? Not even a hint.
The Poet
Like poetry, these reviews have multiple, often conflicting, interpretations and consistently defy grammatical convention.
Selected samples (from real Rate My Professors reviews) include…
“Easy marker, but also not easy.”
The course is... complex”
"If he was a Starburst he'd be a yellow one."
Grains of salt you should take this advice with: None—if you can figure out what the review actually means.
The Ghost
This person only attended the first class and the final exam but feels the need to impress their lackluster memories of the course upon the rest of the world. Their reviews are likely to list attendance as “not mandatory.”
Grains of salt you should take this advice with: A pinch.
The Aggrieved Student
This reviewer is likely to complain that their professor refuses to hand out A or A+ grades, despite the presence of many reviews written by students who did, in fact, receive A or A+ grades.
Grains of salt: A spoonful.
The One Word-er
“Y”
“Good”
“No comment”
“AVOID”
These types of reviews are usually indicative of the level of effort that the student put into the class, so they’re not the most reliable content. String five of them together and you’ll almost get a one-sentence description of the class.
Grains of salt: A heaping spoonful.
The professor
Find a five-star review in a sea of one-star reviews? That might be your professor. These reviews tend to open with something along the lines of “I don’t understand all these one-star reviews.”
Grains of salt: An entire salt shaker.
As classes end and the York student community enters into a frenzy of professor reviews, make sure to take a few minutes to fill out your York University Course Evaluations. These reviews truly help professors improve their classes and give you the opportunity to write about your experiences without being limited to 350 characters.
And yet, the question remains: should you rely on Rate My Professors when selecting courses? Ultimately, it’s a personal decision. Just remember to take this advice with a grain of salt.