A&O SCI 1
Climate Change: From Puzzles to Policy
Lecture and discussion. The registrar has published a final exam time.
Fall 2026: 1 lecture and 6 discussions. 1 lecture and 5 discussions are open. The oldest of these readings was 7 days ago.
Grades
3.12
Average grade awarded in A&O SCI 1. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
47%
of the 1,228 letter grades
D, F or W
8.1%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
7%
80% of those passed
The registrar's own records: 1,228 grades over 10 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 10 terms ran 2.86 to 3.48.
Historical grades for BIANCHI, DANIELE, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 30 · 10.1%
- A 63 · 21.2%
- A- 35 · 11.8%
- B+ 24 · 8.1%
- B 31 · 10.4%
- B- 32 · 10.8%
- C+ 16 · 5.4%
- C 21 · 7.1%
- C- 12 · 4.0%
- D+ 14 · 4.7%
- D 5 · 1.7%
- D- 4 · 1.3%
- F 10 · 3.4%
- P 19 of 330
- NP 9 of 330
- I 5 of 330
Percentages are of the 297 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 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEIBT, ULRIKE reviews ↗ | 3.18 | 3.18 | 485 | 2 | 48% | light | not teaching it |
| BIANCHI, DANIELE reviews ↗ | 2.99 | 2.98 | 297 | 3 | 43% | light | Open, 69 seats left |
| BAIJNATH-RODINO, JANINE ANN reviews ↗ | 2.95 | 2.94 | 192 | 2 | 36% | average | not teaching it |
| FU, RONG reviews ↗ | 3.23 | 3.24 | 169 | 2 | 57% | very light | not teaching it |
| PAULSON, SUZANNE E reviews ↗ | 3.42 | 3.48 | 85 | 1 | 60% | heavy | 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 138 reviews; source checked about 2 months ago. Missing details do not mean there are no papers or exams. Check the current syllabus.
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. Overview of fundamentals of Earth's climate, including greenhouse effect, water and chemical cycles, outstanding features of atmospheric and ocean circulation, and feedback between different system components. Exciting and contentious scientific puzzles of climate system, including causes of ice ages, greenhouse warming, and el niño. Importance of climate science and prediction to society, with emphasis on science's role in identifying, qualifying, and solving environmental problems such as ozone hole and greenhouse warming. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Fall 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 7 readings. Enrollment for that term is over, so these readings are not seats anybody can take.
-
Seats
Open69 seats left in discussions.
Lecture: 111 of 180 enrolled
Instructor
Bianchi, D., Zhao, Y., and Maciel, F.V.
2.99Predicted GPA
Historical records for BIANCHI, DANIELE; 297 letter gradesSeat risk
-6 discussions, 5 open.Every discussion, with its time and seats: 6 discussions
-
Open
12 seats left.
18 of 30 enrolled
-
Open
8 seats left.
22 of 30 enrolled
-
Waitlist
0 of 2 places taken.
30 of 30 enrolled
-
Open
18 seats left.
12 of 30 enrolled
-
Open
15 seats left.
15 of 30 enrolled
-
Open
16 seats left.
14 of 30 enrolled
-
Final enrollment, averaged across each term's sections: between 65 and 255 a term over 9 terms, summer excluded, most recently 110 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 A&O SCI 1 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 Fall 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 · Bianchi, D., Zhao, Y., and Maciel, F.V. · 111 of 180 enrolled
Freed 11 seats over 2 months
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.