LIFESCI 15
Life: Concepts and Issues
Grades
3.39
Average grade awarded in LIFESCI 15. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
52%
of the 3,594 letter grades
D, F or W
1.6%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
5%
95% of those passed
The registrar's own records: 3,594 grades over 12 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
No summer session is in that record.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 12 terms ran 3.25 to 3.60.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 170 · 4.7%
- A 1,298 · 36.1%
- A- 417 · 11.6%
- B+ 416 · 11.6%
- B 639 · 17.8%
- B- 317 · 8.8%
- C+ 124 · 3.5%
- C 141 · 3.9%
- C- 15 · 0.4%
- D 15 · 0.4%
- F 42 · 1.2%
- P 162 of 3,781
- NP 8 of 3,781
- I 17 of 3,781
Percentages are of the 3,594 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P), no-passes (NP), and incompletes (I).
How the non-letter outcomes are counted
They are excluded from the GPA entirely rather than scored, because counting a P as a 4.0 would be a fabrication.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Spring 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PHELAN, JOHN PATRICK reviews ↗ | 3.39 | 3.39 | 3,594 | 12 | 52% | light | not teaching it |
Why Predicted is not the Raw average
“Predicted” is shrunk toward the course average, which is itself shrunk toward the department, so an instructor with a handful of students sits near the course mean rather than topping the list.
Grade records describe outcomes. For what a course is like to take, read student reviews written on dibs below or follow the separate external review link.
Workload and assignments
Work types reported in BruinWalk reviews of this course, across recorded instructors and terms. They may differ from this term's syllabus.
What the work looks like
- 2 exams, said by 3 reviewers
- 4 quizzes, said by 3 reviewers
- Problem sets mentioned, no number given, said by 3 reviewers
- 1 group work, said by 3 reviewers
Read from 28 reviews about 1 month ago. dibs counts only what a review actually states, so a kind of work nobody mentioned is absent rather than zero.
In Springs
Ran in 4 of the last 4 Springs.
From the terms dibs holds, which start in Fall 2021 and exclude summer. A department can run a course in a quarter it never has before.
From the registrar's catalog
Lecture, two and one half hours; discussion, 75 minutes. Introduction to important concepts and issues in the field for non-life sciences majors. Topics include chemistry of life, genetics, physiology, evolution, and ecology--all explored in lecture and debates, with writing component. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Spring 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking LIFESCI 15 was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
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External reviews are separate and do not count toward the dibs rating.