Many course evaluations, including those used in schools by OfStEd, colleges and universities, employ a number of scales as a means of evaluating various aspects of the educational experience of the student. It tends to be assumed that students consider the scales independently. This article argues that students are influenced by a "halo effect" when weighing the merits of aspects of a course. Student evaluations were obtained from 161 university lecturers attending probationary training courses. With a Likert-style structured scale a favourable evaluation of one aspect of a course was shown to be linked with favourable evaluations of other aspects. Similarly with unfavourable evaluations different aspects were shown to correlate. Such was not the case with an open-ended evaluation format. Implications for the interpretation of course evaluations are discussed. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)