Matt and Elizabeth have both written insightful pieces regarding the difficulties and often gray areas that emerge when selecting college professors to guide the next semester at college. Check out “Can we ‘red flag’ professors?” and “Dealing with a Difficult Professor” for more on these.

This post will be short and sweet.

How does a college student even pick professors? Most classes students take during freshman or sophomore year are offered in a variety of different sections, which include an offering of different professors and class time/days of the week. While public college budget cuts may be lowing the amount of sections offered per class, it’s likely that most say… English 101 sections will have several professors from which to choose. (Note: Not all college-level instructors actually have the formal title “professor” attached to their name, but for the intent and purpose of this post, “professor” will be used.)

Say you’re looking at different Monday/Wednesday noon-1:00 sections for English 101 for your freshman year. You can choose between professors White, Steltzman or Varjay. Who the heck are these people? What can I really tell from a last name alone? Worry not… you have tools to avoid picking at random! Here are some ideas.

1. Ask students who’ve been there. Sophomores and juniors who’ve been through the general ed marathon will likely have strong opinions on professors they’ve taken. Graduate students are a good bet too, as they might have colleagues who teach your classes or even teach one themselves.
2. RateMyProfessor.com — The ultimate resource for subjective, bare-faced testimonials of college professors. You can search by either last name or school to pull up student-written professor reviews, ranks and ratings from everything from helpfulness to a chili pepper “hot” factor.
3. E-mail professors. Especially if you’ve never met her or him, shoot a quick e-mail introducing yourself as a prospective student and asking for more information on the class. Not only will the professor be impressed by your initiative, but you’ll get a good sense of their teaching and e-mail style. E-mail correspondence with professors is becoming a growing trend, even for freshman college students.

Hint: To find professor e-mails, simply find the “Directory” page on the college’s Web site.