This is a very interesting course. However the method of evaluation, midterms, and final are very difficult. This professor is very un-engaging and boring in his lectures. If you do the readings, study a lot on your own, and are a good m/c test taker, you will succeed in this class.

This course has interesting material but I did not like the way our knowledge on the material was tested. The midterms require you to remember random little details from the textbook reading that do not actually demonstrate comprehension of the material; while some test questions were more targeted toward the actual understanding of a topic and not just memorization, I found many of the questions to not be this way. He moved too fast through the powerpoints for anyone to write down anything more than a general concept of each slide (sometimes he still moved too fast for this), which makes it very challenging when some test questions as for memorized quantities or information that he did not give us time to copy down. While the slides are on canvas, it makes it challenging to review every slideshow after every lecture on top of the chapter readings.

Course pace was fast, but not overly so. I don't think this class needed 3 midterms, but it was nice that we could drop one. I think Professor Fitzgerald is a fine lecturer and seems to be quite knowledgeable about the content material. I say that, but after taking the first midterm, I stopped going to lectures because all you need to do is read the textbook to do well on the midterms and final. Labs were not difficult, there was no homework (besides really easy weekly pre-labs). You could drop two labs as well. Honestly, just reading the textbook and taking the notes is enough to get an A.

There were no exams for this course, just projects. Homework assignments and projects are quite tough if you don't have a coding background beyond the prerequisites, and I had to go to office hours every week to figure them out. The professor was very nice but often quite unclear on the assignment rubrics, making the homework a good bit more difficult than I think it was intended to. The lectures also sometimes felt pretty disconnected from what we were doing in class, but were still interesting. Discussion was super helpful tho! I'd definitely still recommend this class though, it covers so much necessary material if you are considering a career in astrophysics. It helped me so much with my own research and I'm honestly shocked it hasn't been introduced before!

I did not like this class at all. The homework was all online through the text book and Fitzgerald was incredibly boring. He also flagged me for plagiarism since one of my answers was similar to a quizlet he found online and I had to fight it through the dean. Would not recommend this class to anyone. The midterm and final were difficult and all multiple choice.

Fun class, professor is very knowledgeable in the course material and happy to answer any questions during lecture. Our first midterm was Week 3 so you definitely have to be on top the weekly reading material and class content. Overall recommend!

I was scared of this class at first but I actually ended up really enjoying it. Prof Fitzgerald definitely knows what he's talking about and I thought that all the lectures were well thought out and helpful. You do have to buy Mastering Astronomy (I think it was like $80 for inclusive access) but I thought it was really helpful for the midterm and final. There's weekly assignments and sometimes they took a while (I also read each chapter before lecture) but it helps you get extra credit. Labs were fine; they're run by the TAs and I thought mine was helpful. I didn't think any of the assessments were that hard and at the end, all the grades were curved and mine went up 1/3 letter grade. Overall, it's a solid lab science GE and I highly recommend!

Overall, I felt like Prof Fitzgerald was pretty good and, as someone who is not as strong in science, I really enjoyed Astro 3 and felt like it was a very doable GE. It definitely is a lot of reading each week and the lectures, especially towards the end, were packed full of information, so the ability to memorize a lot of information and have a consistent study schedule was key. Prof Fitzgerald was extremely nice and helpful in his office hours and the actual information itself was pretty easy to understand, just a little dense at times in the textbook. Fitzgerald opens up all of the online questions you could possibly need in order to study alongside more conceptual short answer questions, so if those are done and studied effectively, you pretty much have all of the information you need for the exams. In addition, some questions show up on the exams more than once, so going to Fitzgerald's office hours and looking over what you got wrong is also pretty key so you don't get those questions wrong again. All in all, I really enjoyed the class and found the information interesting, even if the workload was a little bit more. The labs were very doable and could be finished early depending on the day.

I really liked this class overall. I liked learning about the material, the professor was kind and helpful with answering questions, and the tests weren't too hard. However, if you want to do well in this class you have to put in the work. I outlined each chapter before going to the lecture, which was time consuming but it helped me understand and remember the information. If you don't outline beforehand, I believe it would be difficult to keep up with the lecture. Also, he assigns homework for each chapter (there are a total of 19 chapters) which does get annoying, but each assignment is easy and usually has extra credit and you can just go to the book to get the answers. You do need to buy the text book.

this class had interesting content, but the lectures were very fast paced and information packed. the slides were posted online, so I often had to spend another hour or so outside of lectures going back and taking notes on everything I missed in class. attendance wasn't mandatory for lectures, but it was for the labs. the labs weren't too difficult, and you could leave class early if you finished before two hours, which is pretty easy to do. the course gets harder as the quarter progresses; I did very well on the first midterm (there are 2) and did much worse on the final. I had to buy the textbook and access to online materials.