Site aids students in class, professor choices

As advisers begin to pour registration information into the e-mail inbox of every returning IU student, the task of tailoring a class schedule to specific needs weighs heavily on the minds of these students. And the creators of www.pickaprof.com think they might have a proverbial dose of aspirin for the headaches of student registration.\nPick-a-Prof provides class listings, professor information and grade distributions in the professors' past classes. There are even students' critiques of professors on the site, which are edited by the Pick-a-Prof staff for etiquette and amount of information. \nThe Web site started in 2000 after co-creators John Cunningham and Chris Chilek became tired of the traditional process of class registration at Texas A&M University. Chilek said the site is especially useful because it widens the amount of information a student has when choosing classes.\n"It just seemed like the next logical step for schools to take," Chilek said in a press release. "People have always been able to ask their friends, but that offers a very limited amount of information." \nAfter Cunningham and Chilek started the site at Texas A&M, student participation grew to 80 percent within two semesters. As a result of the site's success at Chilek's alma mater, the company decided to enlarge the roster of schools. \n"Most of the schools are listed on our site through partnerships with the university's student government," said Karen Bragg, Pick-a-Prof director of university relations. "While we currently don't have a partnership with IU's student government, we would value their input in order to better streamline the site to the specific school's needs." \nBragg said so far, Pick-a-Prof has 67 universities participating in the program and nearly 500,000 students using the Web site nationally. Bragg said the Web site added IU to its growing roster of universities just 18 months ago. Bragg said the University has a relatively large number of users given the lack of advertising. \n"There are currently 6,000 IU students using the site," Bragg said. "While it's not such a big number for the size of your university, it's actually quite impressive because we have never participated in any active marketing with IU."\nIU isn't the only place where Pick-a-Prof lacks advertising, as the Web site deliberately avoids the use of pop-up ads and the sale of information about the service's users. \n"We actually try to keep the site really clean of Internet ads and pop-ups," Bragg said. "We cover our operating costs through partnerships with the local bookstores. We don't sell e-mail addresses, and we would never do anything like that." \nFreshman Amanda Gerson said she finds Pick-a-Prof both easier to use than IU's registration program and more useful in general because of its features.\n"I think the Web site's a lot easier to use than IU's interface," Gerson said. "It helps me a lot. That's the first thing I do whenever I register for classes. I used the site for my spring semester, and I was able to register in two minutes before a test."\nSophomore Aftab Maredia said he chooses to use the site because of the greater amount of information about the professors. \n"INSITE is good, but it doesn't have student reviews on it," Maredia said. "Pick-a-Prof has reviews of every professor in every course they have ever taught for. When I check with the University's Web site, it gives me the names of the professors, but with Pick-a-Prof, it's easier to get information about the actual professor."\n-- Contact senior writer Dan Patrick at .