SOC GEN 105A
Ways of Knowing in Life and Human Sciences
Grades
3.91
Average grade awarded in SOC GEN 105A. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
95%
of the 892 letter grades
D, F or W
0.1%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
-
the registrar has this letter grade only this term
The registrar's own records: 892 grades over 8 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 8 terms ran 3.82 to 3.99.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 228 · 25.6%
- A 492 · 55.2%
- A- 130 · 14.6%
- B+ 30 · 3.4%
- B 6 · 0.7%
- B- 2 · 0.2%
- C 2 · 0.2%
- C- 1 · 0.1%
- D 1 · 0.1%
- P 2 of 894
Percentages are of the 892 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P).
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 | Summer Session A 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SHAPIRO, NICHOLAS E reviews ↗ | 3.95 | 3.96 | 439 | 4 | 97% | light | not teaching it |
| DE CHADAREVIAN, SORAYA reviews ↗ | 3.88 | 3.88 | 342 | 3 | 92% | light | not teaching it |
| KELTY, CHRISTOPHER M reviews ↗ | 3.85 | 3.84 | 111 | 1 | 95% | - | 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
The chain dibs can see is 1 course long before SOC GEN 105A. Read from Fall 2026, because dibs has not read a class page for SOC GEN 105A in Summer Session A 2026 and a department can change what it requires. This is a floor, not a deadline: dibs has not read a class page for SOC GEN 5, 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.
From the registrar's catalog
Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: course 5 or M71A or M72A. Course 105A is not requisite to 105B. Introduction to study of epistemology to train students to recognize different ways of knowing what we know. In life and human sciences, instruments and methods are use to study, measure, and experiment. Exploration of how they are manifest in technologies that cut across disciplines to help students evaluate explanatory models, standards of proof, and qualitative versus quantitative studies. Explorations may include DNA sequencing, tissue cultures, bioinformatics, statistics, photography and cinema, charts, trees, and databases. DNA sequencing is used to study gene functions, evolutionary patterns, and disease and plays role in legal context to reconstruct aspects of human history or to trace identity of people. Databases play role in life sciences in administrative, commercial, and legal contexts. Photography is used in sciences and medicine (e.g., X-ray photography), as well as in art and forensics. Letter grading.
Sections in Summer Session A 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking SOC GEN 105A was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
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