I agree that student evaluations are mostly garbage but they have saved me from bad professors at times. You just have to know what you are looking for. The rea

I agree that student evaluations are mostly garbage but they have saved me from bad professors at times. You just have to know what you are looking for. The reason evaluations are bad is that you can't just put a point scale on a professor and hope things will go alright. If you look at ratemyproffessor you'll see a lot of people giving bad rating because tests and homeworks were hard. This is BAD. You'll also see a lot of good ratings because the professor was easy. This is also bad. You want to look at the ratings that talk about the teacher's engagement in the teaching process, not in how difficult their material is. Case in point - I had an amazing Group Theory teacher and the assignments and final were really difficult. You'd expect that some people will not distinguish the two aspects of teaching and slap on a bad rating because it's so difficult. Others will see the difference and give a good rating for teaching and describe the course as difficult.