A good professor or teacher can make or break a school year, which is why websites that let you rate your teachers and professors are so valuable. It's a way of warning others of potential teachers to avoid, or at the very least to prepare yourself for what's coming.
These online resources allow you to rate your professor or teacher so that you and your peers can make the best choice possible. Here are six of the best sites that let you rate your teacher worth checking out.
1. Rate My Professors
Rate My Professors boasts more than 19 million ratings of over 1.7 million professors from college students across the globe. These ratings come from more than 7,500 schools across the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, and Wales.
Simply type the name of a professor in the search bar, or find your school by entering its name. From there, you can read and leave reviews for your teachers and professors as either a member or guest. Regardless of your choice, you'll remain anonymous on Rate My Professors, so you don't have to worry about being found out.
On every school's page, you'll find the ratings of its top professors, as well as the average professor ratings and how that school stacks up to similar institutions. When combined with these great ways to use LinkedIn to choose a university to study at, this is a great resource for making an informed decision before going off to college.
When you click on a professor or teacher's name, you'll see their overall quality, whether students would take a class from them again, and the level of difficulty of their classes. You can also see tags that give you a better idea of how that professor teaches, as well as reviews and testimonials written by former students.
2. Rate My Teachers
RateMyTeachers is another popular way to review your classes and teachers. As the name implies, it asks students to rate their teachers on a number of metrics. The focus here is on elementary and secondary school teachers from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
Users can search for teachers by name or choose a school. From there, you can rate that school's teachers or read reviews left by other students. RateMyTeachers allows you to rate your teachers on a scale of one to five stars in the following categories:
- What kind of test does the teacher most often use?
- Is the teacher available for extra help?
- Does the teacher respond to emails promptly?
- Does the teacher post in-class materials online for reference?
- Does the teacher inform students of how their total grades are tallied?
- How much homework does this teacher assign?
- How much writing is required in this teacher's class?
- Does the teacher allow students to use technology in class?
- How much memorization is required to do well in this teacher's course?
If you have ever attended a class taught by a difficult teacher, you know that these questions are some of the most important for getting the most out of a class.
There are plenty of great ways to catch up in school when you've fallen behind. But, by doing some research, you can set yourself up for success and increase your odds of getting a good grade before you ever enter the classroom.
3. Uloop
Uloop is a professor rating site completely powered by college students around the country. It consists of a huge database featuring a large number of schools in the United States. If you want to rate your teachers, then this is a great place to do so. It's also great to avoid getting stuck with a bad professor.
Uloop's biggest feature is not actually its professor rating section, but how it functions as a student marketplace for your college.
This means that it not only allows you to rate your professor, but that it also includes other resources, such as jobs, housing, tutors, textbooks, and test prep. Whether you need to rent a room, find a tutor for homework help, or get help with your course load, Uloop is a great place to look.
Finding the professor reviews can be a little difficult, but the professor reviews themselves are solid, and the professor reviews and ratings are based on the following criteria:
- Helpfulness
- Clarity
- Easiness
The ratings also include comments written by former students, which will give you a great deal of insight into what the professor is like. This way, you'll know what to expect before taking any of their classes.
Think of Uloop as a bulletin board system for students. It covers things like campus jobs, course notes, help with finding roommates, a textbook exchange, student loan help, and much more.
For any college student, Uloop is a fantastic resource that can be used to make friends, get better grades, and rate your professors.
4. Niche
For something a little different, Niche is an excellent choice. Niche doesn't let you rate individual teachers, but instead rates schools based on a variety of different metrics, including the teachers.
This means that you can look through schools to find one that is a good fit for you and your needs. The information on the quality of teachers is devised using the following metric:
- How many students agree that the teachers give engaging lessons
- How many students agree that the teachers genuinely care about the students
- How many students agree that the teachers adequately lead and control the classroom
There's also plenty of other information here to look through when it comes to a school, and covers just about anything you could want. There are nearly 100,000 schools listed on Niche, so there's a wide variety of responses to look through here.
5. Student Reviews
At first glance, Student Reviews looks rather outdated and disorganized. The UI leaves something to be desired, but that doesn't change the fact that Student Reviews features an impressive database of class reviews with over 236,000 college reviews. There are reviews here of over 11,000 universities and more than 15,200 teachers.
The search feature is really great here. You can narrow down your search using a wide variety of metrics such as degree and major, satisfaction rate, school size, location, tuition amount, and other criteria. In addition to professor reviews and school ratings, the platform features a handful of tools like:
- College finder
- Articles related to career and education
- Top schools in the US
- Careers and majors
- High school summer programs
- Internships
If you're looking for something like the top computer science programs for bachelor's degree graduates, then this is the type of place you might find it.
Moreover, users can rate professors based on how clearly they teach, whether they have respect for students, how they express themselves in the classroom, and a number of other qualities.
6. Rate Your Lecturer
If you're based in the UK, you can make use of a great teacher rating site called Rate Your Lecturer.
It's a platform devoted to rating many things, including cities, universities, and of course, lecturers. Its database doesn't match that of Student Reviews and other similar websites, but it's a good starting point if you're looking for professor ratings and reviews.
Rate Your Lecturer allows students to rank lecturers by the quality of:
- Seminars
- Tutorials
- Lectures
- Feedback
- Intranet Support
- Office Hours
- Approachability
Each rating is from zero to ten stars, with a final overall score for the lecturer based on all the individual rankings. Once you find a good lecturer, you may want to make the most of some of the best apps and services for recording a lecture remotely in order to make the most of their lessons.
You can also type your university's name in the search bar to see its top five lecturers and other professors. If you don't see your lecturer listed, you can add him yourself and provide the first ranking. Your review will be anonymous.
Choosing Your Professor or Teacher
Taking a high school or university class from a bad teacher can be the difference between making and failing a course. Fortunately, there are ways to avoid or at the very least prepare for these teachers and professors going in.
These websites let you learn more about the teachers at your school and prepare for their classes accordingly. See the latest professor reviews and ratings, take notes, and then sign up for the classes you're interested in. While reviewing your teachers can be helpful, it's important to keep cybersecurity practices in mind and not reveal too much personal information.
