Historical instructor

Katrina Forest

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.56/5 from 9 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

MICROBIO 101
Quality 3/5Difficulty 5/5
She was probably the best LECTURER in the course, but her exams were so difficult, requiring you to know things that were so in depth or covered very briefly in very small font. I did the worst on her exams because of this, which is unfortunate because I liked her lecturing style and I found it easy to follow.
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MICROBIO 101
Quality 2/5Difficulty 5/5
Prof. Forest is knowledgeable about Microbiology. Her exams on the other hand, cover things we either didn't discuss in lecture or didn't go into detail about. Average for the first exam was a C. The exam was more about being able to pick the best guess and questions were worded confusingly. The other professors for MICROBIO101 are more fair.
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MICROBIO 101
Quality 2/5Difficulty 5/5
Professor Forest is very passionate about her teaching; however she doesn't provide a lot of content in class or in slides and expects you to read the textbook a lot. Her exams are also very challenging compared to the lectures that she teaches in class. She makes the questions way harder than what we've ever done or discussed.
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MICRO470 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
Dr. Forest is a terrific lecturer. However, she also doesn't tend to use slides. This means studying off of the book that has a lot of extra information or off of your probably very messy notes taken from her whiteboard. Without the help of my friends on the problem sets, I would have struggled in this class. Confusing problems were also an issue.
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MICROBIO 470
Quality 3/5Difficulty 5/5
Don't take this class in the Spring. Both professors are awful and do not give fair exams in the slightest. Exam averages were around a 60% and the material on the exam expects way too much from the students. Dr. Forest thinks we are all experts by the time the exam arrives, which is far from the case. There is no indication of what to study.
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MICRO470 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
Lectures were long and sometimes boring but she tried to keep us engaged with in class activities. Its probably helpful to do the readings before class. Tests are pretty hard but similar to the assignments she gives.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Katrina Forest

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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