Ratemyprofessors.com is a popular Web site designed for
students to log in and rate professors and courses taken, and to
help benefit other students considering taking classes taught by
that professor.

Are you tired of wondering what your professor may be like for
that class you signed up to take next semester? If so, make a quick
trip over to the Student Government Association’s Web site and
follow the links to Dogears or ratemyprofessors.com.

Dogears is a resource that was made available to Saint Louis
University students last year. Dogears was founded by Columbia
University students, but now it is accessible and personalized for
other universities nationwide.

Students only have to complete a brief registration form to
obtain unlimited access to SLU’s Dogears Web site.

The site offers a variety of services, including: postings of
textbooks for sale, classified advertisements for a wide variety of
items and a University event calendar and chat board open to any
topic all which are readily available. One new, recent addition
allows all registered users to maintain mini-blogs as part of their
Dogears profile.

In addition, students are able to post reviews and comments on
courses and instructors to help other students who may be
considering taking a class and not have much information on the
professor’s teaching style. Any SLU student can review a professor,
post items for sale or comment on vital campus issues, via the
site.

Dogears is free for students to use. They simply have to fill
out a short registration form, select a username and password and
then confirm their e-mail address which is supplied in the
registration process. Once your registration has been completed,
you’ll be ready to begin utilizing Dogears’ services.

The other link from SGA’s site directs students to
ratemyprofessors.com. This Web site hosts reviews of professors
from students from various colleges all across the country. It is
very helpful and loaded with more information than SLU’s
Dogears.

Their slogan, “Where students do the grading”can be seen on
their main page when the student first arrives. In addition to
rating professors, users can also rate doctors and dentists. There
are also links that can direct students to sites where they can
save money on expensive textbooks and find discounted airfare for
traveling.

Ratemyprofessors.com has two membership options. The first, the
free membership, involves filling out a registration form and
selecting a username, giving an e-mail address and selecting a
password.

The other membership option is the gold option, which you
upgrade to after registering for the free account.

The gold account costs $9.95 per year or $14.95 for two
years.

Some of the gold membership features include: seeing all the
ratings for the professors on the site. (Members with the free
account option see only the 10 most recent ratings per professor.)
Contact registered raters anonymously and ask them questions about
the course, the professor or the school.

Members with the gold account will also be able to search for
professors by class code, search by a professor’s last name and
search for professors by state/province or by country. There aren’t
any popup ads and most other ads are turned off and members
automatically get access to new features as they are added; your
gold membership benefits begin immediately.

Ratemyprofessors.com seems to be the more popular of the two,
with many more ratings of professors, but either way, both can be
helpful in finding out which professor to take when beginning your
scheduling of classes for next semester.