ASTR 5
Life in Universe
Lecture and discussion.
Winter 2026: 1 lecture and 3 discussions. All of them are open. The oldest of these readings was about 2 months ago.
Grades
3.41
Average grade awarded in ASTR 5. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
63%
of the 1,856 letter grades
D, F or W
4.0%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
8%
90% of those passed
The registrar's own records: 1,856 grades over 14 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
1 of those terms is a summer session, and summer sessions are counted here.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 14 terms ran 2.48 to 3.86.
Historical grades for NAOZ, SMADAR, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 121 · 40.2%
- A 112 · 37.2%
- A- 35 · 11.6%
- B+ 9 · 3.0%
- B 11 · 3.7%
- B- 3 · 1.0%
- C+ 1 · 0.3%
- C 3 · 1.0%
- C- 2 · 0.7%
- F 4 · 1.3%
- P 8 of 311
- I 2 of 311
Percentages are of the 301 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P) 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 | Winter 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RICH, MICHAEL reviews ↗ | 3.49 | 3.49 | 727 | 5 | 63% | very light | not teaching it |
| TREU, TOMMASO L reviews ↗ | 2.97 | 2.96 | 400 | 3 | 44% | light | not teaching it |
| NAOZ, SMADAR reviews ↗ | 3.78 | 3.80 | 301 | 2 | 89% | - | Open, 7 seats left |
| MCLEAN, IAN S reviews ↗ | 3.78 | 3.82 | 176 | 1 | 86% | very light | not teaching it |
| HANSEN, BRADLEY M reviews ↗ | 3.35 | 3.34 | 150 | 1 | 53% | very light | not teaching it |
| MALKAN, MATTHEW ARNOLD reviews ↗ | 2.67 | 2.48 | 65 | 1 | 25% | heavy | not teaching it |
| CIURLO, ANNA reviews ↗ | 3.39 | 3.38 | 37 | 1 | 59% | - | 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
Reported assignments across instructors and terms. This term's syllabus may differ.
No assignment details are available in this review summary. Based on 120 reviews; source checked about 2 months ago. Missing details do not mean there are no papers or exams. Check the current syllabus.
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; discussion, one hour. No special preparation required. Topics include formation and evolution of Earth and Sun, life on Earth, origin and evolution of life, solar system, habitability, extra-solar planets, search for intelligent life in universe, and interstellar travel. Draws primarily from astronomy and biology but includes some chemistry, geology, and physics. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Winter 2026
Choose an open discussion to enroll; an open lecture alone does not mean a seat is available.
Seat counts as of : the oldest of these 4 readings. That term is over, so nothing has moved since.
-
Seats
Open7 seats left in discussions.
Lecture: 169 of 176 enrolled
Seat risk
-3 discussions, all open.Every discussion, with its time and seats: 3 discussions
Final enrollment, averaged across each term's sections: between 77 and 180 a term over 13 terms, summer excluded, most recently 169 in Fall 2025. That is the shape across years, not this term, which is above.
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking ASTR 5 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.
Seats over time in Winter 2026
How each lecture has filled since dibs first saw it.
A dot is a reading where something moved: the seat count, the status, or the waitlist.
What a flat run means, and where a line starts
Flat between dots means it did not drift, it held and then jumped, and a line starts when dibs first saw that lecture rather than reaching back before it existed. A lecture that has never moved draws a flat line across the whole window, and one with two or three readings draws a line joining them, which is too few to read a trend from.
Lec 1 · Naoz, S. · 169 of 176 enrolled
Unchanged over less than a minute
Both readings say 169 of 176.
How readings and alerts work
Dated seat counts can be available even when hourly check history is missing. Gaps do not show whether seats changed between observations.
Seat counts show the last successful read, not live availability. Refreshes can be delayed by request limits or upstream interruptions. Watched sections receive priority, but an hourly update for every section is not guaranteed.
The registrar can change a seat count between our checks. Alerts depend on dibs detecting an opening and completing delivery; a quiet watch does not prove that no seat opened. Check the registrar before enrolling.