Niche Review Guide

Who uses Niche

Public and private K-12 schools, school districts, colleges and graduate schools, usually managed by heads of school, admissions or marketing staff, plus the families and students researching them. Reviews come from people with a Niche account who know the school first-hand.

Claim your profile

1. Check the profile for a blue checkmark at the top. If it is there, the profile is already claimed, and Niche suggests contacting partnersupport@niche.com to find out who manages it.
2. If it is not claimed, open Niche's Claim Your School page, search for your school or college, or choose 'My school or college is not listed'.
3. Claiming gives a school representative login credentials for the Niche Partner Portal, where they can add or update school details; the fields available depend on the type of school.
4. Niche says claiming is free; a paid Premium Profile adds features such as more photos and extra call-to-action links.
5. If you have claimed the profile before, log in to the Partner Portal to make updates, and reset your password there if needed.

Official guidelines: nichepartnerresources.zendesk.com

Replying to reviews

Niche's partner help center says Official School Responses are in beta for a select group of K-12 partner schools and will roll out gradually to all K-12 partners. Schools with access log in to the Partner Portal, open the Reviews section, select a review and follow the prompts. Schools that are not Niche partners cannot reply directly to reviews at this time. A Niche rankings guide for schools still says the feature is being explored, so check the Partner Portal for what your school can use.

• Each response is labeled Official School Response with the school's name and publish date, and represents the school's views, not Niche's.
• One response per review, up to 250 characters. Responses cannot be edited after publishing, only deleted.
• Responses must be written by an authorized school representative in their own words; AI may be used only for minor spelling or grammar fixes.
• Responses may not identify or allow readers to identify any person, or confirm whether someone is or was a student, family member or employee, even if the reviewer already said so.
• Responses may not call a review fake or question the reviewer's identity, motives or age; schools should use the Report link instead.
• No ads, enrollment offers, links, email addresses or phone numbers; a general invitation to contact the school's administration is allowed.
• Whether a school responds does not change the visibility, rating or moderation of a review. A school may ask once for a removed response to be reconsidered, by email to partnersupport@niche.com.

Official guidelines: nichepartnerresources.zendesk.com

Review rules

In our own words. The official page is the rule that applies.

• Reviewers need a Niche account with a verified email address. Reviews run 100 to 1,000 characters and can take up to 48 hours to appear, and some are checked by Niche staff first.
• Reviews are anonymous, and Niche does not give schools any personal information about reviewers.
• Niche says it does not edit reviews or remove negative ones, and stays neutral in factual disputes.
• Reviews may be removed for AI-written or coerced content, offensive language, personal information, negative comments about a named or identifiable person, accusations of a specific crime, threats of harm, nonsense, links, advertising, or protected intellectual property.
• A review written about the wrong place or containing plainly false information can be removed, but the error must be obvious and indisputable.
• Schools may not offer incentives for reviews, such as gift cards, merchandise, extra credit or special privileges; they may share Niche's own review sweepstakes and scholarships.
• Niche uses automated filters, community reports and regular audits to catch suspicious patterns such as runs of 1-star or 5-star reviews or many reviews from one IP address.

Official guidelines: niche.com

Reporting a review

Niche's own process, step by step.

1. Hover over the review and click the Report link in its lower right corner.
2. Choose a reason from the menu, add a short explanation of the violation, and click 'Submit report'; a confirmation appears on screen.
3. The report goes into a manual queue. If the review breaks Niche's content guidelines, it is removed within 5 business days; if it is still up after that, Niche has decided it does not violate them.
4. Niche does not send status updates on individual reports. Partner schools with questions about a specific review can contact their Niche representative or partnersupport@niche.com.

Official guidelines: nichepartnerresources.zendesk.com

Tips

• Claim your profile and keep enrollment details, deadlines and tuition current each year.
• Invite current families, students and alumni to share honest feedback, without asking for positive ratings.
• If your school can respond, keep replies short, courteous and free of any details about individuals.
• Report only reviews that clearly break Niche's content guidelines.