POL SCI 40
Introduction to American Politics
Grades
3.50
Average grade awarded in POL SCI 40. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
65%
of the 3,402 letter grades
D, F or W
1.9%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
3%
91% of those passed
The registrar's own records: 3,402 grades over 14 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
4 of those terms are summer sessions, and summer sessions are counted here.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 14 terms ran 3.32 to 3.80.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 386 · 11.3%
- A 1,184 · 34.8%
- A- 635 · 18.7%
- B+ 375 · 11.0%
- B 329 · 9.7%
- B- 178 · 5.2%
- C+ 111 · 3.3%
- C 107 · 3.1%
- C- 32 · 0.9%
- D+ 11 · 0.3%
- D 15 · 0.4%
- D- 11 · 0.3%
- F 28 · 0.8%
- P 103 of 3,539
- NP 10 of 3,539
- I 24 of 3,539
Percentages are of the 3,402 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 | Fall 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TAUSANOVITCH, CHRISTOPHER NICOLAS reviews ↗ | 3.39 | 3.39 | 1,506 | 5 | 57% | light | not teaching it |
| THOMPSON, DANIEL reviews ↗ | 3.54 | 3.54 | 955 | 4 | 68% | very light | not teaching it |
| PAYSON, JULIA reviews ↗ | 3.68 | 3.69 | 699 | 2 | 78% | very light | not teaching it |
| EWING, SEAN reviews ↗ | 3.66 | 3.71 | 61 | 2 | 80% | - | not teaching it |
| SHERRER, THOMAS A reviews ↗ | 3.38 | 3.35 | 57 | 1 | 65% | - | not teaching it |
| PRIVETT, CHASE ALLEN reviews ↗ | 3.23 | 3.13 | 50 | 1 | 46% | - | not teaching it |
| COURBE, JACQUES PHILIP reviews ↗ | 3.59 | 3.62 | 40 | 2 | 73% | - | not teaching it |
| PETERS, MARGARET ETHERIDGE reviews ↗ | 3.43 | 3.40 | 34 | 1 | 62% | - | 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 140 reviews about 1 month ago. That is the reviewers being silent, and not a course that sets no work.
In Falls
Ran in 5 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. Basic institutions and processes of democratic politics. Treatment of themes such as constitutionalism, representation, participation, and leadership coupled with particular emphasis on the American case. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Fall 2025
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking POL SCI 40 was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
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