Students and professors alike should be pretty familiar with RateMyProfessor.com (RMP) where students evaluate their professors on such measures as the quality of their teaching, how easy his/her classes are, and how “hot” (physically attractive) s/he is. A new study has analyzed correlations between high ratings and “hotness” on RMP and has found:

Felton found a positive correlation of 0.64 (0.00 means there is no correlation whatsoever, and 1.0 describes a perfectly linear relationship) between the “hotness” and “quality” -- quality is a composite of “helpfulness” and “clarity” -- ratings on the site. “Hotness” is determined by evaluators choosing “hot” or “not hot,” with each click counting as either +1 or -1.

“Quality” is on a simple 1-5 scale. The potential bad news, for professors who thought the way to a student’s heart is only through a grade, is that being “easy” doesn’t trump being hot, when it comes to the quality ranking. The easiness-quality correlation was 0.62. Some faculty members might be happy to know, however, that being hot and easy don’t necessarily go together. The hotness-easiness correlation was 0.39.

So in summary, the most significant predictor of how well a professor rates on RMP is how physically attractive s/he is. That’s really encouraging to know (uhh, no it isn’t) and speaks volumes about the mindset of college students these days. The MTV generation certainly has its educational priorities straight, don’t they?