Choosing a class in high school or college involves more than just picking a subject that interests you or fits your schedule. The person leading the classroom—the teacher or professor—can profoundly shape your learning experience. A fantastic educator can make a difficult subject accessible and exciting, while a poor one can sour you on a topic you once loved.
For decades, students had to rely on whispers in the hallway or advice from upperclassmen to learn which teachers to seek out and which to avoid. Today, a multitude of websites and online communities have digitized this conversation, offering platforms where students can anonymously share their feedback. These sites provide a valuable layer of transparency, helping you make informed decisions about your education.
But with so many options available, which ones are the most reliable and useful? This guide will walk you through the top 10 best sites to rate and review teachers and professors. We’ll provide a detailed analysis of each platform, covering its features, user interface, pros, and cons, so you can choose the best tool to build your ideal academic schedule.
1. Rate My Professors
Best for: Overall university and college professor ratings in North America and the UK.
Rate My Professors (RMP) is the undisputed giant in the world of professor reviews. Launched in 1999, it has become a rite of passage for college students during course registration. With millions of ratings for over a million professors, its sheer volume of data makes it an essential first stop.
User Interface and Features
The website is straightforward. You search for your school, then find the professor by name. Each professor has a profile page with an Overall Quality score (out of 5.0) and a Level of Difficulty score. Students can also leave detailed comments, apply tags like “Caring” or “Tough Grader,” and indicate if they would take the professor again.
Pros
- Massive Database: The biggest advantage is its size. You are very likely to find ratings for almost any professor at most major colleges and universities.
- Simple Scoring System: The quality and difficulty scores provide a quick, at-a-glance summary.
- Helpful Tags: The user-generated tags offer a quick snapshot of a professor’s teaching style and personality.
- “Would Take Again” Metric: This percentage is often more telling than the overall score, indicating if the experience was ultimately valuable despite any challenges.
Cons
- Potential for Bias: Anonymity can lead to extreme reviews, often from students who received a very good or very bad grade.
- Outdated Reviews: For some professors, the most recent ratings might be several years old, which may not reflect their current teaching style.
- Lack of Verification: There’s no system to verify that a reviewer was actually in the professor’s class.
2. Uloop
Best for: A campus-centric experience that includes ratings, jobs, and housing.
Uloop functions as an all-in-one “student-powered” marketplace. While its primary functions are helping students find housing, tutors, and part-time jobs, it also features a professor rating system.
User Interface and Features
The professor rating section is a smaller component of the larger Uloop ecosystem. The interface is clean, allowing students to rate professors on a five-star scale and leave comments. The real value comes from its localized nature; Uloop is heavily centered around individual university communities.
Pros
- Hyper-Local Focus: Uloop can feel more connected to your specific campus community.
- Multiple Student Resources: It’s convenient to have professor ratings on the same site where you might be looking for a subletter or selling a textbook.
- Less Traffic Can Mean More Thoughtful Reviews: With fewer users than RMP, the reviews can sometimes be less emotional and more specific.
Cons
- Limited Ratings: The volume of professor ratings on Uloop is significantly lower than its main competitors. You may not find the professor you’re looking for.
- Primary Focus is Elsewhere: Since ratings are not the main feature, the tool is less robust and not the company’s top priority.
3. Reddit
Best for: Nuanced, real-time discussions and specific, hard-to-find advice.
While not a formal rating site, Reddit is arguably one of the most powerful resources for vetting a professor. Nearly every major college and university has its own subreddit (e.g., r/uiuc, r/UNC, r/UBC), which acts as a massive, searchable forum for student life.
User Interface and Features
Using Reddit is simple: go to your school’s subreddit and use the search bar to type in the professor’s name or the course code. You’ll likely find dozens of threads where students have asked for or offered opinions. You can also create a new post to ask for fresh advice.
Pros
- Highly Specific and Nuanced Feedback: You can get answers to very specific questions like, “How is Professor Smith’s online version of PSYC 101 compared to the in-person one?”
- Real-Time Information: You can get up-to-the-minute advice from students who are currently in or just finished a class.
- Conversational Format: The back-and-forth of a Reddit thread often provides more context than a static review. You can see follow-up questions and differing opinions in one place.
- Anonymity: Like RMP, Reddit offers anonymity, which encourages honest feedback.
Cons
- Disorganized Information: You have to sift through threads and comments to piece together a consensus.
- No Centralized Scoring: There are no aggregate scores or ratings, so it requires more effort to analyze the information.
- Subjective and Anecdotal: Like all review platforms, the information is subjective and should be taken with a grain of salt.
4. Niche
Best for: High school students researching colleges and K-12 school ratings.
Niche is a comprehensive research platform that helps people choose K-12 schools, colleges, and even neighborhoods. While its main focus is on institutional rankings, it incorporates student reviews about individual professors as part of its college profiles.
User Interface and Features
On a college’s Niche page, you can navigate to the “Academics” section, which includes student-written reviews. These reviews often mention specific professors and departments, and Niche aggregates this data to create grades for a school’s overall academic quality and for individual majors.
Pros
- Holistic View: Professor reviews are presented within the broader context of a college’s academic environment.
- Strong K-12 Component: Niche is one of the few platforms with a significant amount of data and reviews for K-12 teachers and schools, making it valuable for parents.
- Verified Reviewers: Niche often uses student surveys and tries to verify its users, which can add a layer of credibility.
Cons
- Not Professor-Centric: You can’t search for a specific professor. You have to read through general student reviews and hope someone mentions them.
- Geared Towards Prospective Students: The information is more useful for students choosing a college rather than current students choosing a class.
5. RateMyTeachers
Best for: Focused K-12 teacher reviews.
As the name implies, RateMyTeachers is the K-12 equivalent of Rate My Professors. It’s one of the oldest and most established platforms for rating elementary, middle, and high school teachers.
User Interface and Features
The site is very straightforward, mirroring the early design of RMP. Users can search for a school and then find a teacher to rate on a five-star scale. The criteria are slightly different, focusing on aspects like “Easiness” and “Helpfulness.”
Pros
- Dedicated K-12 Focus: This is its main strength. It serves a niche that most other platforms ignore.
- Large Historical Database: Having been around for a long time, it has accumulated a large number of reviews for teachers across the country.
- Simple and Easy to Use: The no-frills interface makes it quick to find and leave ratings.
Cons
- Outdated Interface: The website design feels dated compared to more modern platforms.
- Subject to Heavy Bias: The dynamics of high school mean reviews can be particularly prone to immaturity or retaliation for bad grades.
- Declining Relevance: With the rise of social media and platforms like Niche, its prominence has waned in recent years.
7. Campus-Specific Internal Evaluation Systems
Best for: The most official and statistically reliable data.
Often overlooked, the most powerful tool might be one provided by your own school. Many universities collect end-of-semester student evaluations and make the aggregated, anonymous results available to students for course planning.
User Interface and Features
These systems vary widely. They can range from a searchable online portal to simple PDF documents uploaded to the registrar’s website. They typically provide quantitative data (e.g., “The instructor was well-prepared: 4.8/5.0”) and sometimes include redacted student comments.
Pros
- Highly Reliable Data: These evaluations are collected from a very high percentage of students in a class, making them statistically more reliable than self-selected reviews on public sites.
- Official and Verified: The data is collected and presented by the institution, so there’s no question about its authenticity.
- Directly Tied to Your School: The information is perfectly tailored to your course catalog and degree requirements.
Cons
- Accessibility Varies: Not all schools make this data public. You may have to dig around your student portal or ask an academic advisor to find it.
- May Lack Qualitative Comments: Some systems only release the numerical scores, robbing you of the context provided by written feedback.
- Data Can Be Overwhelming: You might be presented with raw data tables that are harder to interpret than a simple RMP score.
8. Facebook & Other Social Media Groups
Best for: Quick questions and crowd-sourcing opinions from peers.
Similar to Reddit, private Facebook groups for your graduating class or major can be a goldmine of information. Students often create unofficial groups like “UCLA Class of 2026” or “NYU Stern Students.”
User Interface and Features
Using Facebook’s search function within a group allows you to find past discussions about professors. You can also simply post a poll or a question asking for opinions on a few different instructors you’re considering.
Pros
- Community of Peers: You’re getting advice from the people who are in the trenches with you.
- Fast Responses: You can often get answers to a question within minutes or hours.
- Less Anonymity (Sometimes): Since people are using their real profiles, the feedback might be more measured, though burner accounts are still common.
Cons
- Requires Access: You need to be accepted into these private groups.
- Information is Ephemeral: Posts get buried quickly, so searching for old information can be difficult.
- Not a Dedicated Platform: It’s a makeshift solution, not a purpose-built tool.
9. StudentsReview
Best for: A mix of K-12 and college reviews, with a focus on institutional feedback.
StudentsReview is another long-standing review site that covers both K-12 schools and colleges. It allows students to review their schools, classes, and teachers.
Pros
- Broad Scope: It covers the full range of educational experiences, from high school teachers to college professors.
- Anonymous and Uncensored: The platform prides itself on allowing for frank and open feedback.
Cons
- Very Small User Base: It has far fewer reviews than its competitors, making it a long shot for finding information on a specific teacher.
- Clunky and Outdated Interface: The site is difficult to navigate and feels like a relic of the early 2000s web.
10. GradeReports (by the A-Plus Club)
Best for: Students at select universities seeking grade data.
This is a niche but powerful tool available at a limited number of universities. Similar to Koofers, its main draw is providing historical grade data for specific courses and professors.
Pros
- Focus on GPA: The entire platform is built to help students manage their GPA by choosing classes and professors strategically.
- Clear Data Visualization: It presents grade distributions in easy-to-read charts.
Cons
- Extremely Limited Availability: It is only available for a small handful of large public universities.
- Subscription-Based: Full access to the data typically requires a paid membership.
Conclusion: Building Your Information Toolkit
There is no single “best” site to rate and review teachers and professors. The most effective approach is to use several of them in combination to build a well-rounded, three-dimensional picture.
Start with Rate My Professors for its sheer volume of reviews and easy-to-digest scores. Cross-reference what you find there with the more nuanced, real-time conversations on your school’s Reddit community. If your school offers it, dive into the internal evaluation system for the most statistically reliable data. And if you’re at a supported university, use Koofers to see the historical grade distributions.
By triangulating information from these different sources, you can move past the emotional outliers and identify the credible patterns. This allows you to make informed, strategic decisions that will not only help you succeed academically but also make your educational journey more engaging and rewarding.