Student's Guide to Ratemyprofessors.com: Finding the Best and Worst Professors at College

RateMyProfessors.com is one of the only places on the Internet where you can look up professors at your college and find out what other students have thought of them. Professors who are listed on the site are graded based on easiness, clarity, helpfulness and for a fun category, how hot or not they are.

The scores for clarity and helpfulness are used to give the professor an overall rating; they can range from a 1 (worst) to 5 (best) overall. It is not uncommon though to see a professor with a rating of 3.5 or other such number.

Once the overall rating is determined, a smiley face icon is put next to the professor's name to indicate their quality. A yellow smiley face means good, a green no emotion face means average, and a blue sad face is poor quality.

Over my college years, this site has helped greatly when deciding which professor I should take if I had more than one option available. I have also enjoyed reading it to look at the ratings for professors I've had and see if I agree or disagree with my fellow students' ratings. Of course, it's always fun to write your own comment and score your teachers regardless of how excellent or poor they may be.

You can find your school by going to a map where you can click on the state your school is in. This provides a list of all schools in that state and you can just click on yours to go straight to the school's homepage which lists all, or at least most, of the professors.

Although you pretty much have free reign on Rate My Professors, some comments are not allowed. Comments that stoop to name calling, racial slurs, or are sexually explicit in nature just to name a few, are deleted as soon as they are flagged, or reported as abusive.

On the other hand, it is important to rate your professors honestly and objectively. Stick to comments that tell students about what kind of teaching style the professor has and how he or she assigns homework, communicates with the students, and topics covered in class. You should not state your opinion as fact.

What makes this site even better is that all comments are anonymous. There are some pretty funny ones to be found on here as well. Although the site provides a countdown of some of the best, I've also come up with these findings as well (all are from my school's Rate My Professors page):

"The only plus I have about him is that I got a good laugh out of the way he dressed himself."

"He talks about drugs a lot and says etc. etc. literally at least 15 times a class (I counted); one time he got to 30."

"It's like you go in smart and come out dumb. Such a horrible lecture class."

"Wow this professor is so cool and so funny. I want to be just like him when I grow up. I don't know how he got so smart and so funny and so popular, but I want to walk constantly in his shadow in hopes that some small trace of his awesomeness will rub off on me. I'm not being sarcastic at all."

No matter how many times you've used the site and read the ratings, it is important to remember that all the views will not agree with one another. Also, some kids may have done badly in the class and are taking out on the professor, even though the administrators discourage you from doing so. These are the kids who usually don't show up until test time, or very rarely go at all. You should always use your own judgment when deciding which professor to take.

If you'd like, you can sign up for an account on the site. This isn't required, but it will help you track your ratings, bookmark a section for professors you've had, and see all the ratings for a particular teacher. Unregistered users can only see the first five ratings.

Rate My Professors is a great site for anyone who wants to know what their future teachers are really like. As long as you keep in mind that all ratings aren't exactly true or written honestly, you should be able to make good judgments about whose classes to sign up for and who you'll want to avoid.