Kara Ramos
klpardun@valdosta.edu

Before enrolling for classes, VSU students can learn about and compare professors’ characters, grading policies, class structures and more by browsing Rate My Professors.com.

Providing free and confidential service, Rate My Professors.com does not require visitors to create an account to search through over 6,000 schools, 1 million professors and 6 million opinions. However, if one chooses to create an account, it will allow him or her to track and edit their posted ratings.

To locate a professor, users enter a professor or school name into the search engine on the homepage. VSU students would find that VSU’s page lists 378 professors in alphabetical order,
in departments ranging from accounting to women’s studies.

“It’s only useful to an extent because not all professors are listed,” Dixie Sampson, a junior English major, said. “It’s mostly tenured professors who are on there [Rate My Professors.com].”

In the past, Sampson has chosen past professors from reading other students comments on Rate My Professors.com. While not all VSU professors are listed, anyone can add a professor at anytime.

Professors are rated overall with either a good, average or poor quality and some are even rated on their attractiveness. As students read about professors, a scoreboard lists how many people have rated them, their average clarity, easiness, helpfulness, hotness and overall quality.

Rate My Professors.com allows students to post bulletins of experiences with past professors, such as level of difficulty on exams or frequency of homework, which allows viewers to decided for themselves whether to sign up for the professor’s class. According to the Web site, over 65 percent of the ratings are positive.

Other features include professors strike back, which allows students to see how professors feel about comments made about them or their classes, and 2007 top 50 lists, which ranks the highest rated professors, top faculty, attractive teachers and standout professors throughout the United States.

For more information, or to rate your professor, visit their Web site at http://ratemyprofessors.com/index.jsp.