Easy science GE with a lab. Attendance in lecture is not mandatory or necessary to do well in the class. All slides are posted on CCLE and exams are open note. Labs are very straightforward and usually open note. Highly recommend taking this class with Treu.

Honestly, I liked the content of this class and found astronomy super interesting. As someone who took AP Physics C in HS but did terribly in bio/chem, astronomy was pretty intriguing. The 2 timed, open note midterms were kinda stressful for me. I felt like there weren't enough practice/application problems (he gave out a practice midterm of 20 questions after the first midterm because of some requests) but even those weren't as difficult as the mathematical applications in the actual test. Did decently on both. Didn't study too much for the final but it was a lot easier in my opinion, and with the extra 5% Campuswire EC i got a good grade.
However, I found his lectures to be fairly boring. It just was not engaging, and his slides were organized in a brutally painful way so that they were hard to follow, and the important information wasn't really there 1/4 of the time. Again, just imo. He also didn't explain things too well in my opinion. Of course, super amazing, bright, talented guy but I did not enjoy his lectures at all and ended up watching them recorded and pausing to take notes (you can't really take notes during the lecture because he speeds through the slides).
Also, KUDU is really just watching a PBS video of a guy talking SUPER quickly for 10 minutes (so you have to take notes and process it all). And then reading a ton of stuff that is basically a repeat of lecture, but occasionally there's more you just don't know when it's comin for ya.
Labs are super easy IMO but I know other people struggled. I had Nick F and I loved him.
Again, love Treu but I just felt like this class wasn't worth it. I ended with a good grade so it's not really worth stressing over because of the EC & grade curve, but i personally thought it was mediocre. Learned some INSANE COOL THINGS THOUGH!

Professor Treu is brilliant! It was genuinely such an honor to be able to be taught by such a well-spoken and interesting professor. I never felt afraid to ask a question if something was unclear and he genuinely made an effort to ensure that he was making sense. My TA (Philip) was equally as helpful and the labs were not too difficult as long as you understood the lectures too. The tests are definitely not a walk in the park, but reading the Kudu textbook and making sure you pay attention during lecture helps. There were also some opportunities to raise your grade because the tests weren’t the only thing going into the gradebook. As for COVID adjustments, the lectures occurred on Zoom but attendance was not mandatory and the lectures were recorded and posted. I loved this class and recommend it highly to anyone willing to put in the work!

For someone who didn't really attend the lectures, this class was pretty easy to get through. The professor is really sweet but his lectures are kinda boring and hard to get through as someone who isn't interested in astronomy. I actually really enjoyed the labs though, my TA was Philip and he was really helpful. Just make sure you join a breakout room with people who talk and help each other out. I got low Bs on the two midterms and an A on the final. The extra credit helps a lot though.

The final was way harder than the rest of the class. Dropped me from an A+ to an A-, and I did better than the class average. No curve at all. The class overall was fine, but keep an eye out for the final.

This is my second class with Professor Treu because I thoroughly enjoyed taking ASTR 3 with him. I did well in the class, but I know that the midterm&final were not the easiest and that others struggled with those. My advice for future students would be to attend every lecture and TAKE NOTES + try not to rely on the fact that they are recorded and then skip because it is super easy to get behind. Also be sure to practice the math that is presented in the discussions. If you do that you will be fine.

I took this as a GE as a north campus major. I wouldn't really recommend it and there are lots of other GEs out there. This class involves lots of math and there's a lab every week.

I took this class during the online winter quarter and as a GE, so that might affect my review. I'm also bad at math

The concepts we learned were cool and the lectures/homework made them easy to understand.
overall I felt like this class was disorganized (not a big deal though because most people take it as a GE). The professor is also really nice, willing to answer questions, and explains the concepts well. If you are confused on topics there is a lot of resources online, within the homework, within the lectures, etc.
If you're better at math than me you'll do fine.

Overall though the class felt very unorganized. The class included 1) lectures 2) labs and 3) homework assignments. The lectures were not mandatory and the slides were available on Bruin Learn. Labs included a pre-lab and lab assignments, both were graded, but you didn't have to do all of them. My TA for the Labs was great but they often felt like busy work and didn't really expand or connect to the concepts in lectures in super meaningful ways. The homework was probably my least favorite part though - it's one of those homework platforms where you have to buy the textbook in order to access the homework, which is frustrating and makes it more inaccessible for some people. The homework questions were found on Quizlet which was handy but the videos were just crash course videos, so it was annoying to have to pay just to access the readings/videos which I could have found elsewhere. The midterms (there are two) /final are HARD and I did way better on the class assignments than the tests. Normally I don't mind if a class doesn't provide a study guide, since no one is really entitled to having one BUT I literally had no idea what to focus on because there was so much material and it felt disorganized. Practice midterms/final were given so we could "see what the exam would look like" but everything was multiple choice so that didn't really matter anyway. It would have been helpful if I had a more concrete idea of what to study, especially with the equations (write down ALL THE EQUATIONS!)

Honestly, the class is fine in every sense of the word. I don’t think anything this course asks of you is unreasonable, and you can definitely get by while doing the bare minimum(which I don’t recommend). I didn’t attend 90% of the lecture or discussions, but I still passed with an A. Honestly, this was only possible due to the curve on the final and extra credit, which I appreciate greatly. The professor is extremely lenient and super nice, and the TA also seemed very kind as well. I do believe if you attend lectures regularly and go to discussions, which I wish I did, you can get an A with moderate effort.

This class was not the worse despite how little effort I put into the course. Treu was a sweet guy and you can tell he is passionate about the topics, but the lectures weren't mandatory and sort of hard to follow along. You don't really need to attend lectures to do well in the course. The main part of the class that determines your grade is the exams (2 midterms, 1 cumulative final). The two midterms contained 32 multiple choice questions and the final had 40 questions. It was open-note but there are a good amount of application questions and to be honest, I can see why he made it open note because the exams were still a little bit confusing and difficult. There was some math involved but it wasn't the worst since he provided us some examples in the practice exams he provides, but some of the concept questions were difficult to answer. I will say that the first midterm average was like 78%, while most people did a lot better on midterm 2 and the final. However, there is not a lot of structure and resources in the course, and I typically felt pretty unprepared each exams because the practice questions were very dry and minimal. Besides that, he offered 1.5% extra credit this quarter for attending a live stream and writing what we learned, which was pretty nice. The grading distribution you see does reflect this course accurately as Prof Treu wants everybody to succeed and do well in the course! He is super accommodating if reach out to him and typically responds very fast. Overall, Astro 3 is highly dependent on your professor and I HIGHLY recommend taking it with Treu (typically teaches winter I think) to fulfill the science + lab GE requirement (5 units)! Definitely not 100% easy, but I would say easy/medium difficulty.