Professor Ratings Across the U.S.

College students often share their experiences online. Recently, a site called Rate My Professor has become popular among students and has become a common way to relate such experiences, particularly about specific professors they’ve had. Ratings range from 1 to 5 stars that rate professor quality and also includes the grade average the student received in the course they took. Students will often summarize their experience with the professor and can freely add comments that often aim to advise others. In this study, we investigated the difference in professor ratings across different departments in colleges all over the country. In addition, we also asked the question of whether hilariousness or inspiration had a significant effect on ratings. The data we are using is a collection of ratings that came directly from Rate My Professor and was compiled in a single dataset from Mendeley Data (He, 2020). We hypothesize that 1) states with better education will have higher star ratings and 2) if professors are hilarious or inspirational, they will have a higher star rating. Data is currently being analyzed and results will be presented at BURS