My favorite professors are all rated 4.5 or higher, and my least favorites are rated 3.0 or lower; ones I’d rate in between are commonly rated higher than my favorites, but it contains substantially greater than 0 information relative to my school. Apparently YMMV!
I would guess talking to TAs or other same-major students is going to get most LWers a more useful perspective than RMP, but website reviews are still better than nothing.
Only detailed reviews. If you don’t know what the criteria are, they can easily be worse—counting as negative a factor you would consider positive, for example.
I would suggest that if you know nothing about the rating system, it is still likely to positively correlate because of universal factors like speaking clearly. In the case of RMP, I’d suggest that you’d expect an even better correlation because easiness and attractiveness are asked about separately. It’s still possible for this not to work out because of what you suggest, but it seems less likely to me on average.
My favorite professors are all rated 4.5 or higher, and my least favorites are rated 3.0 or lower; ones I’d rate in between are commonly rated higher than my favorites, but it contains substantially greater than 0 information relative to my school. Apparently YMMV!
I would guess talking to TAs or other same-major students is going to get most LWers a more useful perspective than RMP, but website reviews are still better than nothing.
Only detailed reviews. If you don’t know what the criteria are, they can easily be worse—counting as negative a factor you would consider positive, for example.
I would suggest that if you know nothing about the rating system, it is still likely to positively correlate because of universal factors like speaking clearly. In the case of RMP, I’d suggest that you’d expect an even better correlation because easiness and attractiveness are asked about separately. It’s still possible for this not to work out because of what you suggest, but it seems less likely to me on average.