Physics for Life Sciences Majors: Electricity, Magnetism, and Modern Physics

Grades

3.37

Average grade awarded in PHYSICS 5C. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were. i The mean of every letter grade the registrar has published for this course, pooled across every instructor who has taught it. It is not shrunk toward anything, because a course average cannot be pulled toward itself. Standard error 0.008.

The registrar's own records: 5,652 grades over 12 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. No summer session is in that record. Every instructor is pooled here. The table below splits them, and term averages across those 12 terms ran 2.98 to 3.59.

By instructor

“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.

Reviews for PHYSICS 5C ↗

What comes first

The chain dibs can see is 3 courses long before PHYSICS 5C. This is a floor, not a deadline: dibs has not read a class page for LIFESCI 30B and MATH 3B, so the real chain can only be longer than this, never shorter.

Counted in courses rather than quarters: dibs does not know which of them a department lets you take together.

In Falls

Ran in 4 of the last 5 Falls.

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; laboratory, two hours. Requisite: course 5A. Electrostatics in vacuum and in water. Electricity, circuits, magnetism, quantum, atomic and nuclear physics, radioactivity, with applications to biological and biochemical systems. P/NP or letter grading.

Sections in Fall 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 03 Sep 11:30: the oldest of these 15 readings. The registrar publishes hourly and dibs reads what it can each hour, so a row can be older than that.

• Lec 1 MWF 12:00pm-12:50pm

  Closed

  Shi, Q.

  3.47

  this instructor · 520 grades

  176 of 176 enrolled high risk i A guess about whether this will still be here at your enrollment pass, from how full it is now and how fast classes like it have filled before. Seat risk is a prediction and seat status is what the registrar said: they are two things, and this page keeps them apart.

  standing limit limited by standing: Undergraduate Students Only: restrictions read 13 hours ago

  4 discussions, none open. There is no waitlist either, so the only way in is somebody dropping the lecture.

  This limit is on the class, so it applies to all 4 discussions below.

  › Every discussion, with its time and seats (4)

  • Dis 1A

    W 4:00pm-4:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2748

    Closed

    42 of 42 enrolled

  • Dis 1B

    W 5:00pm-5:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2748

    Closed

    42 of 42 enrolled

  • Dis 1C

    F 8:00am-8:50am · Physics and Astronomy Building 2434

    Closed

    46 of 46 enrolled

  • Dis 1D

    F 9:00am-9:50am · Physics and Astronomy Building 2434

    Closed

    46 of 46 enrolled

• Lec 2 MWF 1:00pm-1:50pm

  Closed

  Shi, Q.

  3.47

  this instructor · 520 grades

  176 of 176 enrolled high risk i A guess about whether this will still be here at your enrollment pass, from how full it is now and how fast classes like it have filled before. Seat risk is a prediction and seat status is what the registrar said: they are two things, and this page keeps them apart.

  standing limit limited by standing: Undergraduate Students Only: restrictions read 13 hours ago

  4 discussions, none open. There is no waitlist either, so the only way in is somebody dropping the lecture.

  This limit is on the class, so it applies to all 4 discussions below.

  › Every discussion, with its time and seats (4)

  • Dis 2A

    R 4:00pm-4:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2748

    Closed

    42 of 42 enrolled

  • Dis 2B

    R 5:00pm-5:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2748

    Closed

    42 of 42 enrolled

  • Dis 2C

    F 10:00am-10:50am · Physics and Astronomy Building 2434

    Closed

    46 of 46 enrolled

  • Dis 2D

    F 3:00pm-3:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2434

    Closed

    46 of 46 enrolled

• Lec 3 MWF 3:00pm-3:50pm

  Closed

  Schriver, D.

  3.83

  this instructor · 382 grades

  188 of 188 enrolled high risk i A guess about whether this will still be here at your enrollment pass, from how full it is now and how fast classes like it have filled before. Seat risk is a prediction and seat status is what the registrar said: they are two things, and this page keeps them apart.

  standing limit limited by standing: Undergraduate Students Only: restrictions read 13 hours ago

  4 discussions, none open. There is no waitlist either, so the only way in is somebody dropping the lecture.

  This limit is on the class, so it applies to all 4 discussions below.

  › Every discussion, with its time and seats (4)

  • Dis 3A

    M 4:00pm-4:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 1434A

    Closed

    54 of 54 enrolled

  • Dis 3B

    M 5:00pm-5:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 1434A

    Closed

    54 of 54 enrolled

  • Dis 3C

    T 2:00pm-2:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2748

    Closed

    40 of 40 enrolled

  • Dis 3D

    T 3:00pm-3:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2748

    Closed

    40 of 40 enrolled

Final enrollment, averaged across each term's sections: between 142 and 195 a term over 12 terms, summer excluded, most recently 175 in Fall 2025. That is the shape across years, not this term, which is above.

Seats over time in Fall 2026

How each lecture has filled since dibs first saw it. This course runs 3 lectures; the legend under the chart picks one.