When students at the College of William and Mary register for classes, they often turn to Rate My Professors, a website that allows students to anonymously rate professors from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.
When a student submits a review, they report their overall professor quality rating and perceived difficulty for a class on a scale of 0-5. Students can also share whether they would take another class with the same professor and write a short blurb expressing any other specific details about a professor or course.
The Flat Hat spoke with students about their experiences using Rate My Professors when searching for classes.
Lucas Fernandez ’28 said he did not use the website his first semester at the College but has used it since.
“I learned about it for next semester, and it was really helpful,” Fernandez said.
Thomas Norman ’28 said that he heavily considers a professor’s ranking before deciding to take one of their classes.
“I almost won’t take classes if there is not a Rate My Professor on them,” Norman said. “For me, that is the deciding factor for almost every class I take. If the quality rating is below 3.5, I will not take it.”
Sam Isler ’28 said that he uses the website while acknowledging that the rankings might not be entirely accurate.
“It can be useful if you know nothing about the professor, but what is more beneficial is using your network of friends,” Isler said. “Freshman fall, I took a class with a professor with a terrible score, and she ended up being wonderful. It’s all perspective.”
The Flat Hat extracted a dataset of every review posted about a professor at the College. The information gathered contained professor names, departments, quality ratings, difficulty scores, the percentage of students who would have taken a course again and the number of overall ratings.
In total, there exist 33,511 Rate My Professor ratings about 1,738 professors at the College.
The average overall quality rating for a professor is 3.47 out of 5, with a median score of 3.9.
The average difficulty rating stands at 2.56, with a median of 2.8. On average, a professor has around 19 reviews, with a median of 9.5.
Neuroscience Coordinator and teaching professor of psychological sciences Christy Porter recorded the highest number of student ratings at 228. Mathematics teaching professor Marylou Zapf had the 10th most at 156.
The economics department recorded the highest number of student ratings at 2,822. Psychology placed second and history third, with 2,491 and 2,331 total reviews, respectively.
The classics department saw the overall highest-quality student rating at 4.12 out of 5. The linguistics department recorded the second-highest total quality rating at 4.05 out of 5. Marine sciences posted the lowest total department quality ranking at 1.25 out of 5.
Brendan Maynard ’27 shared why he believes Rate My Professors rankings may not always be accurate.
“Curriculums can change, and classes get easier,” Maynard said. “I feel that a lot of bad reviews brings down the overall professor ratings.”
Isler echoed this sentiment.
“You are your own student, so how are you to listen to someone’s rating when they are not you?”
