(Maisie Plew/Daily Emerald

Opinion: RateMyProfessors.com is not a reliable enough source for dictating your class schedule and should be used with caution, if utilized at all
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RateMyProfessors.com is a website, unaffiliated with any university, offering a platform for anyone to leave reviews and ratings of a professor.
I used to use Rate My Professors frequently, catering my classes around these nameless ratings because I believed professors “make or break” the class. I still do believe they can; however, I no longer think Rate My Professors is a trustworthy source on which to base my academic choices.
While the site has the potential to be an honest forum where students can voice their compliments or criticisms, there are fundamental reasons why this is not the case.
Firstly, since the site does not require any form of verification, anyone, affiliated students or not, can leave anonymous reviews. Because of this anonymity, users cannot be identified or caught spamming multiple reviews to boost or drop someone’s rating.
Secondly, most professors do not exceed 30 reviews/ratings throughout their entire teaching careers, meaning many of these ratings are based on a small sample size built over several years.
Finally, many ratings were created during or before the COVID-19 pandemic. I observed that numerous ratings before 2022 are based on a professor’s ability to navigate asynchronous learning and Zoom, which aren’t applicable to their in-person teaching abilities
It was not until I looked up my favorite professor — who was new at the time and, therefore, did not have any prior ratings — that I reevaluated why I blindly trusted this source. I found my professor received an especially low score by the end of the term. There are differing opinions, but taking their class impacted my life, helped me discover what I was passionate about and introduced them as my mentor.
That incident inspired me to deep dive into this website. I looked over reviews of numerous UO professors and asked UO students across various majors (political science, psychology, advertising, cinema, journalism, comparative literature and business) about their usage and feelings toward Rate My Professors.
I began to question if RateMyProfessors reviews are based on the class being “easy or hard” and less so on the professors’ character, ability to teach, academic credentials and the opportunities and availability they offer their students outside of class time. I was inspired by several reviews.
Professors rated as 4 or higher…
“The final and midterm were super easy and we got study guides for both. I had 100% in the class up until the final because I didn’t even try to get above a C on the final because I didn’t need it. Definitely recommend his class.” – Anonymous
“Easy to do the lectures at home if you miss class. Labs are really easy but attendance is mandatory and if you miss a lab the makeup assignment is super long.” – Anonymous
Professors rated as 3 or lower…
“Papers are 50% of the grade but are graded incredibly harshly (the highest was a 94).” – Anonymous
“The assignments were hard to understand.” – Anonymous
Students at UO had divided responses about the rating system of Rate My Professors and its credibility. Some found it very trustworthy, used it frequently and believed ratings are distinguishable from easy = good and hard = bad.
However, several students noticed the rating inconsistencies.
“There seems to be a large focus on reviews purely about the difficulty or amount of homework a professor assigns,” Ian Ahlberg, a third-year, said. “I rarely see constructive and complex reviews, mostly just anger or praise.”
“Although Rate My Professors can be a helpful tool to get a sense of what future classes might be like, it is also important to remember that it is not an accurate measure of what people are actually like,” second-year student F. Adams said. “Because the people that feel compelled to write a review are likely those that hold the most extreme views about a class or instructor, I always try to take the reviews with a grain of salt.”
“Reviews are often inundated from students who didn’t like the class and/or did not receive the letter grade they wanted and are taking it out on the professor,” third-year Riley Lynch said. “The current usage deters me from actively participating and relying on the website because the reviews are so extreme.”
What each student I asked shared in common, even those with a different opinion than my own, was that they all use RateMyProfessors. Whether they completely trust it or not, they still check the site, just as I do, as an extra precaution.
RateMyProfesssors does not ensure a student will have a positive or negative experience with a particular professor. Our tastes, personalities and studies are so widely different that anonymous people’s judgments should not overpower our decisions to take a class.
If you want to get the best bang for your tuition buck, I recommend asking your friends, classmates, professors and advisors before resorting to RateMyProfessors. And if you’re still worried, you can try to meet the professor and use your own judgment before registering for their class.