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Oh What Absolute Heresy!!!

longknife

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longknife said:
A New Law School Ranking Says The University Of Alabama Is Better Than Yale Or Harvard
Abby Rogers | Feb. 13, 2013



Read more: National Jurist Law School Rankings - Business Insider
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In your source it points out that the ranking uses a completely biased source to come to their conclusion. Not saying I am a Harvard snob or something like that, but I think it is a good idea to point it out.

 
Go SEC!


Plus, RateMyProfessors.com is notoriously inaccurate when it comes to law professors, according to University of Chicago Law School professor Brian Leiter.
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haha
 

Sounds to me like University of Chicago Law School professor Brian Leiter got some pretty bad reviews on RateMyProfessors.com and now he's butthurt.
 
Someone tell TD! :2razz:
 
Ratemyprofessor.com is a joke. Please.
 
Actually i think that ratemyprofessor.com is probably the best metric measuring student satisfaction that exists, and student satisfaction with individual professors should be a very valid component of any ranking system. Education is a product, and the rating system on ratemyprofessor.com is a reflection of customer satisfaction.

I have looked at a heck of a lot of comments on that site, some of them are clearly unfair, but I think that the vast majority are honest and fair. One of my son's professor has the best possible ranking in all categories, except for "easiness" which he has a very bad rating of 1.2 (meaning that he is not easy). His overall ranking is 4.8.

Some students will only give good rankings to easy teachers and may give horrible ratings to hard teachers, but the vast majority seem to have a lot of respect for teachers who are more demanding. There are far more comments concerning communication skills than anything else.

Here is an example of a comment, this student rated the professor at 1 for easiness, 5 for helpfullnes, and 5 for clarity:

Intimidating at first, but then you get to know him. He always has the heat turned on! Very intense, but I've learned more in 10 weeks than ever before
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"Prof. X. is the worst ever. So boring." Followed instantly by "Prof X is the best prof I've ever had. Kept my interest all semester in what was a boring subject."

The last time I looked at Rateaprof.com was because of some posts here at DP about a social anthropologist with a speciality in monkeys. Her reviews were just like that, and I thought, "Nope, hasn't changed a bit."

And it's worse than Pickaprof. Why? Because in addition to numerical rankings, it also offers a chili pepper to rank profs' "hotness." Not exactly serious business. But let's be honest; a lot of students use this in the hope of finding the easy A's.

And BTW, profs sometimes create accounts as students to plump up their numbers. Read something about this 3-4 years ago.

I Googled:

Other students, however, warn viewers to use caution when browsing the website.

“Overall, I think the site is good. You just have to be careful about deflated and inflated ratings and pay attention to constructive, meaningful reviews,” said Novilla.

Users of RateMyProfessors.com must also be aware of their other options. Relying on a website might not be the best route when choosing professors.

“I found more professors I enjoyed taking class with from friends’ recommendations,” said Singh.

Students have mixed feelings about RateMyProfessors.com | Baruch Ticker - Baruch Connect

Friends' recommendations make more sense.
 
nota bene said:
Ratemyprofessor.com is a joke. Please.
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No it certainly isn't. My classes went from bad to awesome by using that site while in college during class signup. I've not met a single person who was failed by rate my professor, in fact most people mentioned it as their reason for taking a given teacher on day 1.
 

I think that the rating system on rate my professor is basically the same type of information that a student would get from a friend. It's a review of professors done by other students. It's the same thing.

That said, I have also noticed some wildly differing opinions on professors on ratemyprofessor. Students do have to take many of the comments with a grain of salt, but overall, when there are 20 reviews, and 17 of them are bad, you can pretty much figure that the professor probably isn't the best, or if 17 are great and 3 are terrible, it doesn't take a genious to figure out that the 3 are probably just angry over their grade.

It's like anything else, you have to read everything, and then try to filter out the garbage.

I remember way back, when I was taking my first economics class, some of the older students (I was 19 or 20, so to me a 30 year old was an old folgie) complaining that the professor was teaching on a graduate level and not a 101 level. They were totally wrong. The professor was exceptionally demanding, but nothing that he taught was beyond the introductory level (which I found out after taking more advanced economics classes). Those "grown ups" were expecting just to coast through the class, and I guess maybe just learn how to balance their checkbook or something.

There is also some value to reading how the comments change over time. I just looked up my old econ professor, he is still teaching, must be 70 years old by now. The comments from six or seven years ago were all pretty good, the comments from the past few years are horrible. I think that may tell us something - he is trending downward rapidly.
 

I largely found those recommendations largely lacking, because I could gather outsiders to the field were reporting in their opinion. Yes, this professor has a lot of reading...welcome to history.
 
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