If you want to get an EASY A in GE classes, you should not choose this class as your primary choice. For the cons, this class has a quite heavy workload: you'll have to read quite a few pieces of reading every week and do the homework regulary which will take you at least 1-2 hours. Besides, the exam is not that straightforward and you'll have to memorize lots of concepts.

However, this class is pretty interesting and has some pros as well. First of all, professor Treu is cute and I find his lectures pretty interesting. You can learn a lot about the basic cosmology and astrophysics as well as fundemantal chem and bio. Besides, the grading is very reasonable. Every single exam (2 midterms and 1 final) only takes up 20% each, and 20% is homework and 20% is discussion participation, with 5 extra credits you can earn through discussion. This means you can afford to have one exam not done quite well but still get A/A+. For me, I didn't do quite well in the first midterm, but I still got A+ in the end (102/100). You don't have to worry to much about every single exam. Overall this class is very good except for its a little bit heavy(but still acceptable) workload.

Tips: If you want to get A/A+, be sure to go to the discussion, or at least go through the discussion slides. Make sure you understand EVERY SINGLE QUESTION in the discussion slides, because they are similiar (almost the same format) to the exam questions.

As a GE, it's a perfectly fine, easy class, but I was not a fan, mostly because I wasn't interested.

Treu is a cute prof, in that old guy passionate-about-astronomy type of way. However, he has the tendency to be really wishy-washy during lecture, so it's a little hard to stay engaged, particularly if you aren't already into the material. His slides were pretty disorganized and it's hard to really know what's the most important stuff to know for exams. He is very passionate about the material and open to student questions, so if you're really into astronomy, unlike me, he's a fun prof to have.

Exams are open note and therefore, weren't too bad in terms of difficulty. The questions were sometimes confusingly worded and it wasn't always clear what they were asking. Final was actually trickier than anticipated because the questions weren't clear and I ended up using the entire 3 hours LOL. The most helpful materials were definitely worksheets that were done during TA discussions that covered much of the mathematical computations that would be on the exams. As long as you have some prior understanding of the topics (especially the math!) and where everything is at in your notes, you'll be fine.

I will say, however, that I HATED Kudu, the online textbook we were required to pay for. If you're familiar with the LS7 series and Launchpad, it's pretty much a budget version of it. Super buggy, often changes answers to your quizzes, and a lot of the texts and videos are available for free online so I wasn't sure why I was required to pay 50 dollars just to watch Crashcourse Astronomy and have my quizzes graded wrong because the program changed my responses post submission. It was easy to get your credit back, though, by emailing the Kudu administrators to get it corrected. But still, if you're paying for a service, you'd think that it would work properly.

Most people didn't go to lecture from what I saw, so that's up to you, but I do recommend attending discussions! He also had an extra credit opportunity that was fairly easy and only took like two hours of my time.

Overall, fairly easy GE if you don't totally drop the ball on it.

This was a great class to take for a GE. It counts for either a Physical Science credit or a Life Science credit. I've always liked learning about outer space and whatnot (especially extraterrestrial life), so I knew that I would enjoy it. However, I was happy to see that Professor Treu is even more interested in it than I am -- and that he shows his excitement so strongly in class!
The curriculum itself was interesting to me also. It skips the Scientific Method and all of the boring middle-school-science crap and goes straight into the good stuff! You'll cover lots of astronomy, some physics and geology, and unimportantly (not even tested), a bit of biology and chemistry. He'll make sure to tell you which topics are important or not. The only gripe that I have with the lectures is that they sometimes shift awkwardly between topics, especially when you're looking at the PowerPoints of the lectures. Otherwise, they are easy to follow.
I only went to the discussion a few times, but that's where the mathematics and physics come in. The discussion worksheets are online, and the equations are easy to grasp if you've ever taken a physics class before. Plus, you don't even have to memorize anything since exams are open-note.
The exams were a bit different from what I've seen in high school. The non-math questions will mostly ask you about something generic (such as "Describe the atmosphere on Mars"). I actually bombed the first midterm because I didn't know exactly how to answer questions like that, but I was able to adjust for the other exams. Basically, the graders are looking for key words and phrases that they want you to touch on in these questions, so literally just dump all of the information you know on that topic in paragraph form -- ALL OF IT. You should have plenty of time to write everything out that you need to and then some.
The math questions aren't too bad either. It's helpful to write a formula sheet that has all of the equations of the discussions summed up.
Finally, the "textbook" is on Kudu, and it's not expensive at all for a textbook. The homework is mostly on Kudu also. It's good practice for the exams too. The only thing is that Kudu is bugged to hell, so make sure it doesn't change your answer on its own -- happened to me several times. Also, there were a couple of cases where the "correct" answer was wrong. When that happened, Professor Treu personally contacted Kudu to get it fixed.
If you need a science GE credit, I can't recommend Professor Treu and this class enough, especially if you enjoy learning about space. Of course, you don't have to be an Astronomy major to take it and you don't need to take any other classes beforehand.

Personally, I really liked the class and the content I felt was enlightening. Before I came into the class, I thought I had a good understanding of astronomy but this class really covered in detail a lot of things we had glossed over in previous classes such as what exactly the Big Bang is, about the cosmic microwave background (you've all seen the picture), about how we know the universe is finite, and so on and so forth.

Oddly enough, I don't think this class actually teaches you much about life in the universe. We cover a bit of biology in the end, but this is more of an intro to astronomy course than it is about astrobio and extraterrestrial life. If you have a strong physics background, then this class is a good fit for you.

For me, I felt that the workload was very manageable, about 1 hour of reading the slides, 1 hour for mandatory discussion (which was usually very helpful), and about 1 hour for homework. The class is asynchronous and all the slides are already up on CCLE so you can go through them whenever you want. Kudu as the textbook is very buggy and almost every time we had to contact Kudu support to correct errors in how the homework was graded (it's multiple choice auto-graded).

The professor does not have a big role in the class and it's really the TAs that are teaching you all the content. The professor's lecture slides are pretty good and with the discussion, cover all the information you need for exams. Exams are untimed, 24 hours for the multiple choice and 85 minutes for the free response/short essay style questions. I found the exams to be fair although they do grade hard on the essay style questions.

There is a lot of extra credit in the class, +5% to your total grade for just getting a certain number of upvotes on Campuswire. The grade cutoffs are lenient too, you only need a 90% or higher for an A. Also, just going to most of the class discussions will get you 100% on the participation grade which is 20% of the total grade. As for homework, it's multiple choice on Kudu but only 5 out of the 8 or 9 homework assignments count for your total grade.

In any case, I recommend this GE although I know some people found the exams and workload to be challenging. If you have a physics background, you'll probably find this class interesting and the workload manageable, but if not, you'll probably get the grade you want with all the extra credit anyways.

This class is a literal joke. Terrible lectures (the subject itself is very interesting but the professor makes it seem dry), extremely easy exams and homework (although sometimes tedious), unengaging discussions, and up to 5% EXTRA CREDIT (literally all you have to do is answer questions in the class online). Not to mention 85% is considered an A-. Would NOT take again with this professor, but it was definitely my easiest class.

Fairly easy class. I showed up to lecture maybe like 10% of the time, did not do the extra credit, and still got an A-. I just found it to be extremely boring, and I found it more worth my time to peruse the lecture slides than to sit in class for an hour and fifteen minutes. Like another person said, the graders are looking for an info dump on each short answer question for the midterms and finals, so literally just copy and paste everything relevant to the question from your notes to your answer on the test. The discussion worksheets were extremely useful for the exams, so much so, in my opinion, that they were essential to doing well. Overall, it was a pretty alright class. Maybe I just found it boring, because I didn’t force myself enough to be engaged in the material enough.

Final Note: If you’re coming into this class taught by Professor Treu thinking you’re gonna be learning mostly about E.T. and what he and his homies are grubbing on for breakfast, be prepared for disappointment. The class title is pretty misleading. It was mostly a general overview of how our universe works (solar system, gravity, ffs even electromagnetic waves) with a sprinkle of speculation on topics relevant to life besides that on Earth in the universe

I just dropped this class even though I have 100 percent on the homeworks and 90 percent on the midterm with an average of a 70. Let me explain why. The lecture slides are unengaging and while containing very interesting content is presented in such a way that makes it a drag to go through. You are also forced to pay for Kudu which is an extremely buggy website.

But what really made me drop this course was the professor's response to midterm criticism. The FRQ questions weren't that hard, but were extremely vague as to how they were worded. Even if you demonstrated a thorough understanding of the question if you don't hit certain keywords you would get docked off a significant portion (despite the professor being against memorization tests). A lot of students went onto campuswire to criticize the grading. While I give credit that the professor promised to make future tests more specific, he was very unwilling to accept criticism (being passive-aggressive calling a student's very respectful response rude) and publicly pointing out people's grades and implying they should have gotten lower ("In fact you got 15/25 even though the question explicitly...").

I entirely recommend taking this class for the knowledge, as learning about the universe is fun and cool :D

But try to avoid this professor. Or if you do, go in willing to get docked off for not listing off every single greenhouse gas in a question that doesn't ask for it. I will be taking this course again since I like the topic, just as P/NP as a GE.

Here's why you can take it:

1. Not painfully hard.
2. Manageable workload.
3. Not a strict class.

Here's why you can take it, but you'll not like it:

1. $50 MANDATORY (BUT EXTREMELY POOR) TEXTBOOK - Kudu, the website for us to do all the homework and participation questions, is the most unorganized online textbook ever (you can easily find free textbooks 10x better than this) and it's very frustrating to use (no chapters, no concept highlights, no equations).

2. SLOW LECTURES WITH NO RECORDINGS - Professor Treu is a nice person, but don't expect too much from his lectures. He's often lecturing aimlessly with no real information given, while the slides are always not helpful at all and the topics are all over the place.

3. UNPLEASANT VIBE - For a class covering fantastic topics, this one is not inspiring at all: ambiguous, poorly structured, and often just boring. Astronomy should be some of the most fantastic topics to ever be made into a class, but this one skipped most - if not all - of its charm.

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.

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.