The first day of class is a minefield of anxiety. Will the syllabus be a novel or a checklist? Will the professor lecture from slides for three hours straight? Knowing what to expect before you even step into the lecture hall can save you a lot of headache. For decades, the go-to resource has been RateMyProfessors.com. The site hosts over 6.8 million student-generated ratings covering more than one million professors across the US, Canada, and the UK.
It works like any other social network. You can browse it for free. No account needed to read. Just type in the name and see what the collective student body thinks.
The History of the Site
John Swapceinski, a software engineer from Menlo Park, California, launched the site in 1999. It grew steadily until late 2005, when he sold it to Baltimore Solutions, Inc. The new owners were Patrick Nagle and Will DeSantis. They weren’t outsiders. In college, they had already built an online textbook trading platform.
By early 2007, the duo moved to Viacom MTV Networks. They took the site with them, relocating the headquarters to New York. Today, RateMyProfessors is part of mtvU. This is a hub of social networks, entertainment news, and contests aimed directly at college students.
Who Uses It and Why Advertisers Care
The traffic numbers are significant. The site reports 9 million users. The demographic breakdown is specific. Seventy-five percent of users are students. Fifty-six percent are female. Eighty-six percent fall within the 18-to-35 age range.
This makes it prime real estate for advertisers. You’ll see sponsor ads on most pages. MTV Networks also promotes its upcoming shows on the main page, mixing them with mtvU videos.
How the Rating System Works
The interface is straightforward. Search for the school and the professor. Click the name in the results. You land on the “scorecard.”
Here is what the metrics mean:
- No. of Ratings: The count of student reviews. More data points generally mean more reliability.
- Average Easiness: A 0-to-5 scale. Five is the easiest course material. Zero is grueling.
- Average Helpfulness: Also 0 to 5. Five means the professor is extremely supportive.
- Average Clarity: 0 to 5. Five is “crystal” clear communication.
- Hotness Total: A “for fun” metric about physical appearance. Ignore it if you care about pedagogy.
- Overall Quality: The composite score. Closer to 5 is better.
Scroll down past these totals. You’ll see the raw comments. Each entry lists the date, the class taken, and the rater’s prior interest in the professor. Sometimes these comments offer genuine tips for survival in that specific course.
You can flag reviews that are slanderous or erroneous. The site has posting guidelines, and users can report violations.
Adding Your Own Review
To contribute, you must register. The process is standard. Username. Password. Profile info. But there’s a catch. You have to enter your school, your major, and at least one current professor. You can add up to six professors to your profile. You can also opt into updates from mtvU, including casting calls.
Once logged in, you can rate any professor. If the professor isn’t in the database, you can add them. There is no verification process for adding a teacher. Consequently, the site has fictional professors. Their ratings are often jokes inspired by TV shows or movies.
When you submit a real rating, the form demands more data. You need to provide textbook feedback. You must enter your grade. You can choose “Rather Not Say” if you’re shy. You confirm if the professor still teaches there. Comments are capped at 350 characters. A link to the guidelines is included, which is standard for user-generated content.
What About the Professors?
Professors aren’t powerless. Each page has a link: “Professors add your rebuttal here.” Clicking it opens a message about how to write rebuttal comments linked to student ratings.
To do this, a professor must register as a “certified professor.” This process is more rigorous. The site states that each registration is “analyzed and verified before access is granted.”
The system is built on trust. And sometimes, a little bit of chaos. The next section will dig into the benefits and how this compares to competitors.
RateMyProfessors has survived by ignoring the trend of feature bloat. While other platforms chase engagement through endless social features, this site sticks to a single function: letting students review instructors. The utility here is stark. You get access to millions of ratings without paying a dime or navigating complex social feeds. The forum exists, sure, but it is basic. It doesn’t compete with Facebook or even early MySpace for social interaction. The value proposition is purely the data.
The Structure of Student Feedback
The feedback loop is straightforward but effective. Undergraduates provide scores for both quality and difficulty. You can cross-reference these numbers. Does a high difficulty rating correlate with a low quality score? Or does the student simply struggle with the workload? The site encourages this comparison.
Guidelines exist to filter out spam, but the comment sections are where the real utility hides. These aren’t just rants. They are tactical guides. Future students read these comments to learn which textbooks to buy, which homework sets to skip, or how to survive a strict grader. It’s a crowdsourced survival guide.
mtvU, which owns the platform, frames the experience around the “fun side” of college. But the mechanism is serious. It replaces the old paper evaluations that professors see but students never touch. Now the data is public. That shift causes friction.
The Controversy Around Unregulated Reviews
The controversy isn’t new. Universities and professors have pushed back since day one. The core argument against the site is selection bias. People who had average experiences rarely bother to log in. They have no emotional stake in the outcome.
The people who do post are the extremes. They either loved the class or hated it with passion. These users often have an agenda. They might be trying to punish a professor for a bad grade or promote one for a personal reason. This isn’t a hidden secret; it’s the nature of open forums.
Naomi Rockler-Gladen highlighted this tension in a 2007 analysis. She didn’t take a side. She laid out the trade-offs. On one hand, critics argue the data is flawed and biased. On the other, proponents argue these sites provide a crucial check on power. They allow students to push back against instructors who might abuse their authority or force ideological indoctrination. The question remains: do the benefits outweigh the noise?
Competitors and Alternatives in Professor Review Sites
RateMyProfessors is the market leader, but it isn’t the only player. Newer sites try to differentiate with unique features or stricter access controls.
Campushopper.com offers a broader social network for students. It’s not just about professors. It’s a hub for campus life. But it lacks the depth of professor-specific data.
Then there are the niche attempts. Professor Performance (myprofessorsucks.com) uses a letter-grade system instead of stars. It feels more academic, or at least more traditional. GPABook.com adds textbook price comparisons. It’s useful, but it’s a side quest, not the main event.
PickAProf.com tries to add credibility by restricting access. You need a valid .edu email address to view the full ratings. This reduces anonymous trolling, but it also limits the sample size. For many students, the barrier to entry is worth it for the perceived higher quality of data.
Weighing the Validity of Online Ratings
Search engines can pull up blog posts and forum blurbs about any instructor. But raw search results lack the aggregated weight of a dedicated database. Credibility matters. When you see a professor with 200 ratings, you trust the average more than a single blog post.
Skepticism is healthy. Blindly trusting a rating is risky. A “3.5” on difficulty might mean the class is easy, or it might mean the professor is just lenient with grades that don’t reflect learning. Context is everything. The comments section provides that context.
Despite the valid criticisms and the growing list of competitors, RateMyProfessors remains the default tool for semester planning. Millions of students rely on it. It’s imperfect. It’s biased. It’s messy. But for now, it’s the most established resource available.
As the landscape of social networking continues to evolve, the utility of niche, focused platforms like this one might become even more relevant. The question isn’t whether these sites are perfect. It’s whether they are useful. And for now, the answer seems to be yes.
Lots More Information
Related HowStuffWorks Articles
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- Are social networks good for job productivity?
- 10 Things You Should Never Share on Social Networks
Sources
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