About
PlanetTerp is a website designed to help students at the University of Maryland — College Park (UMD) make informed decisions. We provide a professor review system, grade data for courses and professors, and various tools which aggregate data about UMD and its courses. We hope that you find these features useful!
Goal
Our goal is to provide information that will help all students at UMD make informed decisions.
Review Writing Tips
If you're not sure what to write, here are some suggestions to get you started:
- Did you think the exams or other major assignments were fair?
- Did you think the professor had reasonable expectations of the students in the course overall?
- Were you a fan of the professor's teaching style?
- Was the workload appropriate for the number of credits?
- Was this course a waste of time or was it beneficial in some way?
- How much support were you given throughout the semester (office hours, extra resources, etc.)?
You're welcome to write your review in anyway you see fit, but here are a few tips to maximize your review's readablility and usefulness:
- Clearly structure your thoughts through a pros and cons list, spaced-out paragraphs, or another format of your choosing. The community will thank you.
- Try to avoid excessive use of caps lock. We promise you, whatever you want to write can be written without caps lock!
While anyone is free to submit a review, anonymously or otherwise, all reviews are manually verified by us before being displayed on the site. Below are some common reasons reviews get rejected:
- Reviews like "really bad", "horrible", or "awesome professor" aren't helpful. Elaborate on why you feel this way about the professor! Remember: users who read your review haven't taken this professor and are relying on YOU to help them make an informed decision.
- Excessive hostility towards a professor. Negativity or criticism is fine, but insults or accusations are unlikely to lead to an accepted review.
- Excessive/unnecessary profanity or any discriminatory language. We won't reject your review for a few swear words, but do try to keep it to a minimum.
Review Accuracy
A common concern with professor review websites is that the reviews aren't necessarily accurate to real life, because a student with a negative experience is more likely to leave a review than a student with a positive experience. This may certainly be true, and you should take this into account when considering reviews.
Additionally, be especially wary of trusting the rating of a professor with a low number of reviews.
Source Code
PlanetTerp is completely open source! Check out our GitHub. Contributions and/or feature requests are welcome.
Credits
Professor and course information comes from a combination of the Schedule of Classes and umd.io. Grade data is obtained from the IRPA via a PIA request. Initial reviews were imported from OurUMD, and initial grade data was from VA Grades.
Contact us
We can be emailed at admin@planetterp.com.
Other Organizations at UMD
Check out these other student-run organizations at UMD:
If you want your organization on our homepage, please contact us at the email above!
PlanetTerp Team
Liam DeVoe
Jonathan Saewitz
Noah Sandler
