Ratemyprofessors.com (RMP) is a website that students rely on before they pick their classes. What RMP does is it lets you get inside information from previous students who have taken the professor or taken the course that you are looking at taking.

RMP has a couple categories; the teachers overall quality, the average grade, teachers helpfulness, clarity, easiness of the teacher and it will even tell you if the teacher is good looking or not. The best part of the site is the student reviews.

Past students usually write a brief description of the teacher, how the teacher tends to grade, how he or she is during class and inside on the way the class will be run. The large number of categories and the individual reviews give you a much more accurate view of the professor than just a number grade by itself.

Another great part of RMP is that it will always be in your hands, you can’t complain about having a bad teacher or not knowing what your getting into. Instead, you can set up your schedule to maximize your strengths and not your weaknesses.

RMP takes pride in being accurate, and while the individual reviews themselves might be subjective, the large number of reviews provide an overall average that’s fairly accurate. Inevitably, even the best teachers receive some bad ratings, but thanks to the accompanying review, prospective students can easily pick out the difference between a genuine problem and a bad apple just trying to smear somebody they have a grudge against.

Of course, even honest poor reviews can prove insightful, since the categories of grading allow students to rate a professor well in one area and poorly in another. Instead of just a poor score, you can see whether the teacher is friendly but lacks teaching skills, or overly strict in class but gives little homework.

If you are a high school senior RMP also ranks colleges so if you are not completely sold on a school you can check out what current students and former students think about the school. RMP is a great tool for college students and should be something that every college student uses because it is easy to use and very reliable.