CLUSTER 70A
Evolution of Cosmos and Life
This is a year, not a class
Clusters run across three quarters, fall, winter, then the spring seminar, and UCLA counts the credit on completing the yearlong cluster: four GE requirements and the Writing II requirement. Signing up for the first quarter is signing up for the year.
Dibs only reads Winter 2027, so the later parts show no sections here: that is this term, not the sequence ending. What you keep if you take only part of a cluster is a question for the Cluster Program, not something these numbers answer.
Grades
3.64
Average grade awarded in CLUSTER 70A. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
74%
of the 1,293 letter grades
D, F or W
1.5%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
1%
7 of 7 students passed
The registrar's own records: 1,293 grades over 5 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 5 terms ran 3.52 to 3.76.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 111 · 8.6%
- A 570 · 44.1%
- A- 270 · 20.9%
- B+ 144 · 11.1%
- B 112 · 8.7%
- B- 31 · 2.4%
- C+ 16 · 1.2%
- C 13 · 1.0%
- C- 7 · 0.5%
- D+ 3 · 0.2%
- D 4 · 0.3%
- D- 4 · 0.3%
- F 8 · 0.6%
- P 7 of 1,301
- I 1 of 1,301
Percentages are of the 1,293 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P) 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 | Winter 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FRISCIA, ANTHONY RAYMOND reviews ↗ | 3.65 | 3.65 | 1,062 | 4 | 74% | average | not teaching it |
| JEWITT, DAVID CLIFFORD reviews ↗ | 3.66 | 3.66 | 828 | 3 | 74% | light | not teaching it |
| PETIGURA, ERIK A reviews ↗ | 3.66 | 3.66 | 828 | 3 | 74% | light | not teaching it |
| SUPRIYA, K reviews ↗ | 3.65 | 3.65 | 571 | 2 | 72% | - | not teaching it |
| BROWN, CAITLIN ANNA-CORBETT reviews ↗ | 3.57 | 3.56 | 231 | 1 | 71% | light | 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 96 reviews about 1 month ago. That is the reviewers being silent, and not a course that sets no work.
In Winters
Has not run in Winter in the 4 Winters dibs holds records for, back to Fall 2021. 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
Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Course 70A is enforced requisite to 70B, which is enforced requisite to 70CW or 70DW. Limited to first-year freshmen. Use of concept of evolution, as it applies to biological organisms, Earth, solar system, and universe itself, to introduce students to both life and physical sciences. Examination of evolution of universe, galaxy, solar system, and Earth. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Winter 2027
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking CLUSTER 70A 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.