Everyone has horror stories about those teachers who made their classroom experience a living hell. As next semester approaches, students say they will check the highly popular college website, ratemyprofessors.com.

They agree the site cuts some of the curiosity they have when enrolling in a new class.

“If I go onto the site and there are overwhelming negative comments or some serious red flags I factor that into whether I may stay in a class or not,” architecture student Andrew Emar said.

With a sea of information available students are able to view and post anonymous comments about the professors. On a scale of one to five they rate them in categories including helpfulness, clarity, easiness and hotness, which is marked by a chile next to the professor’s name.

While navigating through the site, many students find it tough to weed out those comments that are actually helpful in deciding classes.

“I wouldn’t go straight off of the star rating. The responses are just too variable,” zoology major Teal Young said. “There is a lot to look through and the responses often vary with the subject.”

The website was founded in 1999 by California software engineer John Swapceinski but was bought by MTV Networks in Jan. 2007. As it continues to grow, students have seen the quality of responses fall.

“I feel like I really had to look through a lot,” said engineering major Chris Shoemaker. “Some people seem to take a long time [rating] and have valuable feedback, but sometimes I feel like it reflects more of the student’s personal experience rather than a fair assessment of the class and its instructor.”

Other students agreed that often times the site is used to vent frustration rather than for useful critiques.

“Overall I think most kids are babies. They just want the ‘easy A’ and when they don’t get it they like to complain on the website,” Emar said.

Another difficulty with the site is that not all of the teachers may be listed or commented on.

“One of the things I have a problem with is finding some of the classes,” Shoemaker said. “Some of the higher math [classes] are not even listed,” .

Overall, ratemyprofessors.com proves to be an interesting tool for students when it comes to choosing their upcoming class schedules. However, a common rule of thumb seems to be to take the responses with a grain of salt.