<p>I’ve used rate my professor from day one and have also found it very accurate. Don’t take the ratings themselves at exactly face value though. You need to learn how to read into it, IMO. For example, you may compare a prof with an overall rating of 4.0 with 10 reviews and another prof with an overall rating of 3.5 but with 110 reviews. I put more weight to the ratings the more reviews there are. Next, I take a quick tally at how many reviews were recent (within last 2 years) and putting weight to those that have consistent reviews within that time frame (i.e. at least 1 or 2 reviews every few months or so, indicative of a new quarter or semester class). I also try to analyze the text in the review too, of course. If there’s a bad review that simply states “this prof sucks! don’t take him/her!” among a plethora of good reviews that do not say similar things, then it could be considered an outlier and biased from possibly receiving a bad grade. I have also made it my own rule of thumb to actually not take a class with a prof who does not have any reviews or has enough that I can count on one hand.</p>
<p>By placing my own kind of “judgement call” based on the analysis technique above, I’ve never gone wrong or had a “bad” professor. Quite often my experience with the prof is very similar to the reviews I’ve checked on rate my prof.</p>
<p>What really sucks is using it and signing up with a specific prof based on the reviews only to have the prof switched at the beginning of the term - to a prof that has horrible reviews! That happened to me once, but it worked out and I still got an A in the course.</p>
<p>One of the most useful things I found with the site is that sometimes reviewers can reveal valuable information about the structure of the course too, like if a prof allows for open note exams or if a group project is to be expected or even if there’s a textbook required (possibly saving money) and so on.</p>