Current instructor

Cary Forest

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.73/5 from 11 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

PHYSICS 208
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
Physics 208 has the worst organization of any class I've ever taken. Twice the honors lecturer hasn't shown up and students were not notified. Cary rambles so much his message is almost incoherent and Its way more difficult to learn from him than the internet or book. Cary shares almost no useful info in each lecture, and Schmidt shares too much.
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PHYSICS 322
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
Probably the worst Physics teacher I have ever had. He simply goes over derivations from the book, but in a very hard to follow manner. His homework often simply doesn't ask questions with no explanation. His tests also are on topics not convened in class at all. Avoid him if you can.
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PHYS247 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 4/5
He was an all right professor, he rambled on a bit but in the end he taught you what you needed to know. He tends to spend a lot of time in lecture on derivations.
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PHYS248 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 5/5
Physics 248 is the hardest class in the history of time and space. That said, Professor Forrest is very good at delivering interesting lectures, although he may ramble a bit, it usually ends up being helpful later. He's very helpful outside of class at well. One of the few professors that's a morning person.
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PHYSI247 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 5/5
Seems to talk as if he knows he's smarter than you. Grades pretty hard and isn't very helpful in terms of office hours.
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PHYS247 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 3/5
A really nice guy but not the best prof ever. It's definitely necessary to read the book even though he doesn't talk about what we read very much. Rarely gets everything done that was planned.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Cary Forest

ECE/NE/PHYSICS 527

Plasma Confinement and Heating

3 credits

Covers principles of magnetic confinement and heating of plasmas for controlled thermonuclear fusion, including field structures, orbits, stability, transport, and concepts like tokamaks and stellarators.

Offering recorded · Spring 2027 · Sources

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2014: 3.42 GPA, 65.0% A/AB (n=20 letter grades); Spring 2017: 4.00 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=15 letter grades); Spring 2025: 4.00 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=11 letter grades). Includes jointly taught sections.

Cary Forest

historical GPA · grades

Spring 2023–Spring 2026 · limited sample
PHYSICS 990

Research

1–12 credits

Research supervised by individual faculty members. Students formulate and plan original research, creating work that contributes to the field of physics.

Offering recorded · Spring 2027 · Sources

Pupa GilbertIrena Knezevic+78 more

No recorded grade history

Recorded teaching history

Distinct courses recorded per term

Explore courses taught by this instructor →
Browse recorded courses
TermCourseTitle
Spring 2027ECE/NE/PHYSICS 527Plasma Confinement and Heating
Spring 2027NE 790Master's Research and Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 199Directed Study
Spring 2027PHYSICS 299Directed Study
Spring 2027PHYSICS 498Directed Study
Spring 2027PHYSICS 499Directed Study
Spring 2027PHYSICS 681Senior Honors Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 682Senior Honors Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 691Senior Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 692Senior Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 990Research
Fall 2026NE 790Master's Research and Thesis
Fall 2026NE 890Pre-dissertator's Research
Fall 2026NE 990Research and Thesis
Fall 2026PHYSICS 990Research

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

Instructor identity & provenance 
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