Current instructor

Stanislav Boldyrev

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.62/5 from 24 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

PHYS202 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 4/5
Mostly read off of the lecture slides but did derive examples on the board. He did his best to explain problems thoroughly and is very passionate. The textbook was very dense and mostly unhelpful.
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PHYSICS 202
Quality 4/5Difficulty 3/5
His lectures are pretty helpful. However, he does pull his lecture materials from the textbook.
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PHYS103 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 3/5
People are too hard on this guy. Very sweet aura, definitely cares about his students. Was he the best professor ever? No, but, he worked through many examples at a slow pace, and did his best to make sure we all were following. If you spend time studying outside of class, you'll survive.
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PHYS103 · course not matched
Quality 3/5Difficulty 4/5
The only decent lecturer of 103. Moves very slowly and thoroughly explains concepts at level that is understand by introductory students. That said, nothing can really prepare you for the types of questions on these exams. Still plan on doing a LOT of work on your own time.
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PHYS201 · course not matched
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
I think Boldyrev is a fine professor who happens to teach a difficult class. While there was not a lot of lecture time for this class, I think the material covered in lectures were useful. It can be hard to know what content will be on the test but the practice test he sends out is very helpful for this.
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PHYS201 · course not matched
Quality 1/5Difficulty 5/5
201 is a 5 credit class, but they only lecture 2 times a week for 50 mins. The professors don't even make the slides and there is too much material in too little time. Exams make up most of your grade, and are all multiple choice with no partial credit. Even TAs said they believed this was a lazy way to test 201 students. This class is bad.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Stanislav Boldyrev

PHYSICS 721

Theoretical Physics-electrodynamics

3 credits

Electrostatics, magnetostatics, Green functions, boundary value problems, macroscopic media, Maxwell's equations, the stress tensor and conservation laws, electromagnetic waves, wave propagation, dispersion, waveguides, radiation, multipole expansions, diffraction and scattering, special relativity, covariance of Maxwell's equations, Lienard-Wiechert potentials, radiation by accelerated charges. Knowledge of electrodynamics (such asPHYSICS 322) strongly encouraged.

Offering recorded · Spring 2027 · Sources

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2021: 3.17 GPA, 39.1% A/AB (n=23 letter grades); Fall 2022: 3.34 GPA, 64.5% A/AB (n=31 letter grades); Spring 2023: 3.17 GPA, 41.7% A/AB (n=12 letter grades).

Stanislav Boldyrev

historical GPA · grades

Fall 2022–Spring 2026
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 2027PHYSICS 499Directed Study
Spring 2027PHYSICS 681Senior Honors Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 682Senior Honors Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 691Senior Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 692Senior Thesis
Spring 2027PHYSICS 721Theoretical Physics-electrodynamics
Spring 2027PHYSICS 990Research
Fall 2026PHYSICS 103General Physics
Fall 2026PHYSICS 990Research

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

Instructor identity & provenance 
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