Throughout high school and college, I have seen many friends give up on taking a class because the teacher’s reputation with other students wasn’t good, or because they had a bad rating on RateMyProfessors.com. I have even done this myself, but recently I have realized that this behavior is an exaggerated reaction.

While I believe that RateMyProfessors.com is a great source for learning more about our professors, I think that we place too much importance on the experience that other students had with them.

While it may be a red flag that many other students don’t like a certain professor, I still think its very subjective to rely so much on the opinions of others, to the extent that you change your schedule because of it. The question of whether or not you like a professor is based on your personal preference, and that varies from person to person. If your friend doesn’t like Professor X because he thinks her lectures are repetitive, you might like her because you prefer lectures that have the same organization and follow the same pattern.

And that’s without factoring in the biases that must go in every RateMyProfessors evaluation.

Imagine the anger you would feel after just receiving the news that you got a C on a class you worked really hard for. Are you not going to blame it on the professor for at least a few minutes? And yes in some cases it really was because the professor wasn’t that clear on the grading requirements for the course, but many times it's because students didn’t pay enough attention during lectures or didn’t do all the reading.