How accurate are online professor ratings?

Graphic by Jenna Tibby

For many Santa Monica College (SMC) students, ratemyprofessor.com (RMP) is a trusted website for researching professors. This popular review platform allows students to rate professors from different subjects with a quality score out of 5, allowing students to make a decision before enrolling into a class. 

Despite many students utilizing the site, do these nameless reviews reflect the experiences of all students in the classroom? 

“Every time I use Rate My Professor... most of the time, they’re pretty honest and accurate,” Heidi Serrano said, a second year criminal justice major and frequent user of RMP, who reflects the trust many SMC students place in the platform. 

However, not all students share the same opinion. Third year theater major Bella Thi is more cautious about using RMP. 

“Generally, people tend to exaggerate reviews... Sometimes it’s a personal thing, and sometimes they’re awesome,” Thi said, suggesting that some reviews might be based more on personal experiences. “Personality is more important to me in most situations.” 

Using RMP and analyzing departments with over 1,000 quality student review scores from the past 2023-24 semesters, this chart presents the average score of SMC’s biggest academic departments, revealing how favorably students rate professors. Arts and Humanities instructors have the highest quality score at 4.7 out of 5 stars, while Physical and Life Sciences trails at 3.3 stars. Math professors score 3.8 stars, higher than both departments of Physical and Life Science and the 3.5 stars in Social Science/Communications. 

When these ratings are compared to the percentage of students earning a C or higher in the 2023–24 academic year, another story is shown. By organizing SMC’s grade distribution data among all students per semester, pass rates are between 75% and 78%, suggesting that SMC students in different departments have similar academic outcomes each semester. 

Yet, RMP reviews say differently. Arts & Humanities is rated a full point higher than most other departments, showing that SMC students in these courses feel more satisfied with their professors in online reviews, even though actual performance does not vary much. To add on, the Math and Physical/Life Science departments have similar pass rates but students rate Math instructors more favorably on RMP. 

Angus Sandoval, a third year art major who has never used RMP, points out his issue with online reviews. “From what I know about the internet, negativity usually comes out first,” Sandoval said, implying that most online reviews on RMP are from negative experiences. 

Despite different views, students on campus still have trust in a site like Rate My Professors.  “Students do their best to be honest, or at least share what they think is best,” Serrano said. 

“It definitely helps me choose classes better than going in blind,” Thi said.