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 7 days 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. 1 of those terms is a summer session, and summer sessions are counted here. Every instructor is pooled here. The table below splits them, and term averages across those 14 terms ran 2.48 to 3.86.
- A+ 288 · 15.5%
- A 572 · 30.8%
- A- 309 · 16.6%
- B+ 170 · 9.2%
- B 169 · 9.1%
- B- 100 · 5.4%
- C+ 83 · 4.5%
- C 63 · 3.4%
- C- 27 · 1.5%
- D+ 11 · 0.6%
- D 17 · 0.9%
- D- 13 · 0.7%
- F 34 · 1.8%
- P 140 of 2,028
- NP 15 of 2,028
- S 2 of 2,028
- I 15 of 2,028
Percentages are of the 1,856 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P), no-passes (NP), satisfactory (S), and incompletes (I). 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 |
“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.
dibs measures outcomes: grades, seats, how fast a class fills. For what a class is like to sit in, BruinWalk has the reviews.
What comes first
dibs has not read a class page for ASTR 5, so it cannot say what comes before it.
Counted in courses rather than quarters: dibs does not know which of them a department lets you take together.
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
You enroll in the discussion, not the lecture, so a discussion's status is the one that decides whether you get in. A lecture can read open while every discussion under it is full.
Seat counts as of : the oldest of these 4 readings. That term is over, so nothing has moved since.
-
Lec 1 MWF 10:00am-10:50amOpen3.78this instructor · 301 grades
7 seats left. 169 of 176 enrolled -
not checked yet3 discussions, all open.
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.
Seats over time in Winter 2026
How each lecture has filled since dibs first saw it.
Lec 1 · Naoz, S. · 169 of 176 enrolled
Unchanged over less than a minute
Both readings say 169 of 176.
Across the 1 hour from 27 Aug 03:05 to 27 Aug 03:05, dibs holds a read record for 1 of them. Every hour plotted carries a read, so a flat run here means checked and unchanged.