Historical instructor

ALEX LAZARIAN

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.81/5 from 52 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

ASTRON 104
Quality 3/5Difficulty 4/5
Alexandre means well. He is truly passionate about the subject & course and wants his students to succeed. However, his lectures are pointless at times and I learned most of the material from the textbook. Read the textbook and study HW & textbook questions for the exam!
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ASTRON 104
Quality 5/5Difficulty 2/5
He is a great professor who truly cares about his students. He sprinkles some good life advice into his lectures. Many students seem to struggle with astro 104, but if you have taken a physics class and go to most lectures this class will be an easy A in my opinion.
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ASTRON 104
Quality 2/5Difficulty 3/5
The course is graded on 3 exams which often include questions from the homework, but there are some surprises on the exams. He does one "practice exam" at the beginning of the semester which isn't worth anything. His lectures were quite boring and it was often difficult to understand him. He did boost exam scores randomly, but don't count on that.
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ASTRON 104
Quality 2/5Difficulty 1/5
Alex Lazarian is a lot of things - a professor, an astronomer, highly intelligent, occasionally funny - but he is not a good lecturer. I do not believe I learned a single thing during lecture; I learned almost all of the course materials out of the textbook. I would not recommend unless you are willing and able to do most of the learning yourself
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ASTRON 104
Quality 2/5Difficulty 4/5
Professor Lazarian likes to hear himself talk more than teach, his exams are 90% of the grade with homework being worth only 10%. I once asked him & TA's for help and he said that asking for help is taking advantage of TA's. There are 2 lectures posted every week. They're almost an hour each. This class is not fun or worth it.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with ALEX LAZARIAN

No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.

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Recorded teaching history

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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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