Rate My Professors
Rate My Professors is an online platform where students review and compare college and university professors and courses.
Last updated October 5, 2026
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Overview
Rate My Professors is a student-oriented review and discovery platform focused on college and university instructors. The service allows users to look up professors, read student-submitted evaluations, assign ratings, and in some cases review courses and schools. Its central product is a searchable database organized around institutions and individual instructors rather than a conventional editorial ranking system. The service was founded in 1999 by John Swapceinski. It emerged during the early growth of consumer-generated websites, when students were beginning to use the internet to exchange practical information about classes, instructors, and campus life. Rate My Professors differentiated itself from official institutional evaluations by presenting peer-generated commentary in a public, easily searchable format. The platform became especially recognizable through its numerical and category-based ratings, including assessments related to quality, helpfulness, clarity, and perceived difficulty. It also became associated with informal student language and highly variable review styles, ranging from concise recommendations to detailed accounts of classroom experiences. Rate My Professors has served several overlapping purposes. Students use it before registration to compare instructors, identify teaching styles, and anticipate workload. It can also function as a reputational channel for professors, because repeated public reviews may shape how prospective students perceive them. Researchers, journalists, and higher-education observers have likewise treated the site as an example of participatory reputation systems, although its content is not equivalent to a controlled academic assessment. The platform's usefulness depends heavily on the number, recency, specificity, and representativeness of reviews available for a given instructor. The brand has operated through multiple ownership phases. It was acquired by Student Advantage in the mid-2000s and later became associated with MTV Networks. It was subsequently acquired by Chegg, an education-technology company that operates a portfolio of student services. Under Chegg ownership, Rate My Professors has remained a distinct consumer-facing brand rather than being fully absorbed into Chegg's core subscription products. Like other open review services, Rate My Professors has faced recurring questions about moderation, anonymity, fairness, and the possibility of abusive, inaccurate, retaliatory, or unrepresentative reviews. The platform's public model gives students a low-friction way to share experiences, but it also makes it difficult to verify every claim or ensure that ratings reflect a balanced sample of classroom performance. These limitations are central to the brand's identity: Rate My Professors is best understood as an informal student information resource and reputation platform, not as an official institutional evaluation system or an objective league table. Its ongoing positioning is therefore practical and consumer-oriented. The service helps students navigate course selection and instructor choice by aggregating peer feedback in one place. Its enduring appeal comes from simplicity, broad recognition among North American college students, and the social value of student-to-student information. Its principal constraints are uneven coverage, possible bias in voluntary reviews, changing institutional policies, and the difficulty of maintaining reliable content at large scale.
History
Rate My Professors began in 1999, when John Swapceinski created a website that enabled college students to share opinions about their professors. The project belonged to the first generation of large-scale consumer review sites, applying the logic of public ratings and user comments to higher education. Instead of relying on official course evaluations distributed by institutions, it invited students to create a visible, searchable record of classroom experiences. The service grew by organizing information around schools and instructors. A student could locate an institution, find a professor's profile, and read or submit reviews. Over time, the platform developed recognizable rating categories and a standardized presentation that made instructors easier to compare. The database model encouraged network effects: a site with more participating students offered more useful information, which in turn could attract additional users and reviews. During the 2000s, Rate My Professors became an established name in the online student-information market. The company was acquired by Student Advantage in the mid-2000s, and it later became associated with MTV Networks. These ownership changes placed the service within larger media and student-marketing businesses while preserving its consumer-facing identity. The site continued to operate as a specialized destination for professor reviews rather than becoming an official component of university administration. Chegg later acquired Rate My Professors, bringing the brand into a broader education-technology portfolio. The relationship connected the review service with a company serving students through academic support, study tools, and other education products. Rate My Professors nevertheless retained its own name and primary function: aggregating student-generated information about instructors and courses. The platform's history also illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of public online reputation systems. Its anonymity and accessibility make participation easy, and students may value candid comments that are not available through institutional channels. At the same time, voluntary submissions can be uneven, emotionally charged, or shaped by unusual individual experiences. Professors and higher-education commentators have raised concerns about inaccurate statements, personal attacks, review bombing, and the risk that a small number of posts may be treated as representative of an instructor's teaching. Those concerns have made moderation and content governance persistent issues for the brand. A review site must balance openness with protections against harassment, defamation, and irrelevant commentary, while also deciding how to handle requests to correct or remove material. The service's ratings should consequently be interpreted as informal peer sentiment rather than verified performance data. Rate My Professors remains an influential example of student-generated higher-education information. Its core proposition has changed little since launch: give students a centralized place to exchange practical opinions about professors before they choose classes. Its evolution has mainly involved ownership, interface, moderation, and the changing expectations placed on online platforms. The brand's continuing relevance reflects the demand for accessible peer advice, while its limitations reflect the unavoidable trade-offs of turning subjective classroom experiences into public scores.
- 2016
Acquisition by Chegg
[1]Chegg acquires Rate My Professors and adds the established professor-review brand to its education-technology portfolio.
- 2007
Association with MTV Networks
[1]The brand becomes associated with MTV Networks following a subsequent ownership transaction.
- 2005
Acquisition by Student Advantage
[1]Rate My Professors is acquired by Student Advantage, placing the student review service within a larger student-oriented business.
- 1999
Rate My Professors is founded
[1]John Swapceinski launches the service as a website for student-submitted opinions about college and university professors.
Products and positioning
A peer-generated higher-education review and discovery platform that helps students research professors and courses.
Search and discovery · 1999
Professor profiles
Searchable pages for individual college and university instructors. Profiles generally collect student ratings, written comments, course-related information, and aggregated indicators intended to help students compare teaching experiences.
User-generated content · 1999
Student ratings and reviews
A user-contributed review system through which students share opinions about professors. The format combines structured ratings with free-text commentary, allowing the service to present both numerical summaries and individual experiences.
Education search
School and course discovery
Institution- and course-oriented browsing features that help students locate professors connected with particular schools or subjects. Availability and depth of information vary according to the platform's contributor base.
Sources3 sources
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