HIST M60W
Achaemenid Civilization and Empire of Alexander
Needs a grade of C or better: C- does not count, and neither does a Passed grade.
Also listed as AN N EA M60W, IRANIAN M60W: the same class, and each department holds its own seats and its own grade history.
Grades
3.59
Average grade awarded in HIST M60W. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
76%
of the 238 letter grades
D, F or W
2.1%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
2%
4 of 5 students passed
The registrar's own records: 238 grades over 4 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 4 terms ran 3.46 to 3.74.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 4 · 1.7%
- A 108 · 45.4%
- A- 70 · 29.4%
- B+ 18 · 7.6%
- B 14 · 5.9%
- B- 10 · 4.2%
- C+ 4 · 1.7%
- C 3 · 1.3%
- C- 2 · 0.8%
- F 5 · 2.1%
- P 4 of 243
- NP 1 of 243
Percentages are of the 238 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P) and no-passes (NP).
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 | Spring 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SHAYEGAN, M RAHIM reviews ↗ | 3.59 | 3.59 | 238 | 4 | 76% | - | 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.
There are no BruinWalk reviews of this course on record as of 26 days ago, so nobody has told dibs what kind of work it sets. That is dibs holding no reviews at all, and not reviewers who wrote without mentioning the work.
What comes first
dibs has not read a class page for HIST M60W in any term it holds, 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 Springs
Has not run in Spring in the 4 Springs dibs holds records for, back to Winter 2022. That is 4 years of grade records rather than the course catalog, so it says what has happened and not what the department will do next.
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
(Same as Ancient Near East M60W and Iranian M60W.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisite: English Composition 3. Not open for credit to students with credit for course M60. Survey of period from circa 600 to 300 BCE, rise and fall of Achaemenid Persia, first world empire of antiquity, which was ended by Alexander the Great, whose campaigns were as transformative as they were violent. Alexander connected ancient Mediterranean and Near East as never before, ushering in new era and forever changing cultural landscape of ancient world. Focus on themes of ancient kingship and political ideology; comparative study of empires; administration and institutions; and religious and ethnic diversity in large, heterogeneous states. Emphasis on diversity critical to understanding political nuances of ancient world. Students gain broad knowledge of Achaemenid and Macedonian empires, facility with ancient primary sources, and development of analytical skills central to discipline of history that allow conceptualizing issues of diversity and othering in ancient world. Satisfies Writing II requirement. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Spring 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking HIST M60W was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
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