ASTR 3
Nature of the Universe
Grades
3.23
Average grade awarded in ASTR 3. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
49%
of the 2,646 letter grades
D, F or W
4.4%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
8%
91% of those passed
The registrar's own records: 2,646 grades over 13 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 13 terms ran 2.82 to 3.61.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 295 · 11.1%
- A 591 · 22.3%
- A- 420 · 15.9%
- B+ 351 · 13.3%
- B 330 · 12.5%
- B- 198 · 7.5%
- C+ 138 · 5.2%
- C 120 · 4.5%
- C- 91 · 3.4%
- D+ 18 · 0.7%
- D 27 · 1.0%
- D- 10 · 0.4%
- F 57 · 2.2%
- P 212 of 2,897
- NP 20 of 2,897
- S 2 of 2,897
- I 13 of 2,897
- DR 4 of 2,897
Percentages are of the 2,646 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P), no-passes (NP), satisfactory (S), incompletes (I), and withdrawals (DR).
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.
Withdrawals are the exception to "excluded": DR is not scored, but it IS counted in the D, F or W figure above, which is reported over the letter grades plus the withdrawals. Pass/no pass and S/U outcomes are outside that figure on both sides.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Winter 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TURNER, JEAN L reviews ↗ | 3.38 | 3.38 | 398 | 3 | 51% | light | not teaching it |
| LARKIN, JAMES E reviews ↗ | 3.20 | 3.20 | 381 | 3 | 46% | light | not teaching it |
| FITZGERALD, MICHAEL P reviews ↗ | 2.96 | 2.95 | 324 | 4 | 35% | average | not teaching it |
| YU, TZE YEUNG MATHEW reviews ↗ | 3.45 | 3.47 | 279 | 2 | 66% | very light | not teaching it |
| TREU, TOMMASO L reviews ↗ | 3.21 | 3.21 | 269 | 2 | 52% | average | not teaching it |
| SHAPLEY, ALICE EVE reviews ↗ | 3.14 | 3.13 | 240 | 2 | 40% | light | not teaching it |
| SALTZBERG, DAVID reviews ↗ | 3.28 | 3.28 | 204 | 2 | 55% | light | not teaching it |
| RICH, MICHAEL reviews ↗ | 3.07 | 3.05 | 187 | 2 | 41% | very heavy | not teaching it |
| TURYSHEV, SLAVA G reviews ↗ | 3.66 | 3.71 | 140 | 1 | 79% | - | not teaching it |
| MALKAN, MATTHEW ARNOLD reviews ↗ | 2.94 | 2.90 | 119 | 1 | 31% | heavy | not teaching it |
| GATKINE, PRADIP reviews ↗ | 3.27 | 3.28 | 105 | 1 | 55% | - | 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.
dibs has read this course’s reviews and none of them say what kind of work it sets, so dibs has nothing to show rather than a guess. Read from 376 reviews about 1 month ago. That is the reviewers being silent, and not a course that sets no work.
In Winters
Ran in 4 of the last 4 Winters.
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, three hours; laboratory, two hours. Not open to students with credit for or currently enrolled in course 81 or 82. No special mathematical preparation required beyond that necessary for admission to UCLA in freshman standing. Course for general UCLA students, normally not intending to major in physical sciences. Introduction to vast range of cosmic phenomena including planets in our solar system and beyond, stars, supernova explosions, black holes, galaxies, and universe as whole. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Winter 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking ASTR 3 was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
No student reviews are available to read on dibs for this course yet. Took it? Tell the next person what helped, what was hard, and how you spent your time.
Looking for more perspectives?
External reviews are separate and do not count toward the dibs rating.