Or, alternatively, what are the best points that a schools has. As I wrote, For a kid who does not like a party atmosphere, a dozen reviews giving a school a 1 because “boring, no party scene” are a benefit, not a problem. Conversely, for a kid who wants a lively social scene, a dozen 5s because “great academics, students more interested in intellectual development rather than partying” are a reason to avoid attending that college.
Overall, students are often really bad at identifying many objective problems, such as teaching issues (out of date concepts, low academic standards, etc). On the other hand, students are really good at identifying characteristics which are really important for “fit”.
That being said, looking at Niche reviews on issues of “fit”, it is important to understand who the student body are. So if students at WashU complain about dorms, one should always remember that the vast majority of the students at WashU are wealthy to very wealthy White and Asian kids. It doesn’t mean that the dorms aren’t bad, but that the students writing the complaints may have different expectations than the average middle class student. BTW, WashU’s dorms are great, and even the wealthy kids attending WashU comment on how great they are.
Of course, some complaints on Niche belong to the “you either have never even visited the school website or suffer from real reading comprehension issues” category. There is no need to take complaints like “Colby is too rural”, “UCLA is way too built up”, or “Wheaton (IL) is too religious” seriously, since these are part of the description of these colleges. Same for colleges which are known to have specific cultures. So complaints that Oberlin is “to liberal” or that Harvey Mudd is “too nerdy” are also not to be taken seriously.
So Niche reviews are useful, with these caveats, and with ignoring the actual scores, but looking at the reviews themselves.
One last thing - sometimes people who are not students will “bomb” a college that they do not like, because of political reasons, with a large number of negative reviews. Sometimes these people are more or less honest, and simply say “this place treats {insert group here} badly, I give it a 1”, while others are extremely dishonest and pretend to be students complaining about whatever they don’t like “I am a student at this university, and a member of {insert group here}, and I was treated badly by faculty and by other students”. Also - students lie too, especially if they can do so anonymously.