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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Site gives course advice

Pickaprof.com offers data about professors, courses to help students schedule

Students no longer have to rely solely on the advice of friends when choosing professors. They can now consult www.pickaprof.com, a Web site that provides instructor reviews, grading histories and biographies at no charge to its members.\nBut ranking professors is not the site's only objective -- it also gives students the opportunities to plan their schedules before registration and reserve textbooks.\nThe site is maintained by founders Chris Chilek and John Cunningham. Although the Web site is new to IU, its founders said about half of the undergraduates at the 15 colleges it serves use it within two semesters.\nChilek and Cunningham said they saw the need for such a service while still in school at Texas A&M. Both graduated from the university last year.\n"We noticed there was a really limited amount of information available for students to learn something about their classes and professors before they picked them," Chilek said. "The pieces of information that were available were few and far between and not organized in a way that would allow easy comparison.\n"So we set out to make a more comprehensive and interactive feedback system for students to learn about professors and classes before the first day of class." \nCunningham said data for the site comes directly from universities, with the professors having the option to submit biographies.\nEach instructor is rated on a scale of one to five, the latter being the highest score. All the professors' scores are averaged to obtain an overall rating. So far, several hundred IU students have posted instructor evaluations. \n"I would encourage everyone to leave more," Cunningham said. "Students often include information about lectures, homework and exams, so the more reviews we get, the more useful the service becomes."\nSenior Jo'El Rouse expressed enthusiasm for the site.\n"I think the site is a good idea because students can see professors' track records and to what degree they are challenging," he said. "I was always big on talking to people and trying to find out information about a class I was interested in and the professor who taught it"

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