POL SCI 142A
Political Parties and Interest Groups: Political Parties
Grades
3.54
Average grade awarded in POL SCI 142A. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
68%
of the 551 letter grades
D, F or W
2.2%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
2%
8 of 9 students passed
The registrar's own records: 551 grades over 2 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 2 terms ran 3.48 to 3.63.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 12 · 2.2%
- A 282 · 51.2%
- A- 83 · 15.1%
- B+ 49 · 8.9%
- B 55 · 10.0%
- B- 22 · 4.0%
- C+ 13 · 2.4%
- C 22 · 4.0%
- C- 3 · 0.5%
- D+ 1 · 0.2%
- D 2 · 0.4%
- F 7 · 1.3%
- P 8 of 565
- NP 1 of 565
- I 3 of 565
- DR 2 of 565
Percentages are of the 551 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P), no-passes (NP), incompletes (I), and withdrawals (DR).
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.
Withdrawals are the exception to "excluded": DR is not scored, but it IS counted in the D, F or W figure above, which is reported over the letter grades plus the withdrawals. Pass/no pass and S/U outcomes are outside that figure on both sides.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Fall 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZALLER, JOHN R reviews ↗ | 3.54 | 3.54 | 551 | 2 | 68% | - | 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 not read this course’s reviews, so it cannot say what kind of work it sets. That is dibs not having looked. It is not a course without papers or exams, and the reviews linked below are the answer until dibs catches up.
What comes first
dibs has not read a class page for POL SCI 142A 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 Falls
Has not run in Fall in the 4 Falls 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. dibs has no record of it in any quarter since Winter 2023.
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 or four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisite: course 40. Designed for juniors/seniors. Organization and activities of political parties in U.S. Attention to historical development of parties, nature of party change, campaign functions and electoral role of parties, membership problems and party activists, political finance, and policy formulation practices. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Fall 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking POL SCI 142A was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
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