MIT Subject Evaluations

8.901 Astrophysics I
Fall 1998 Summary

Lecturer: Professor Saul Rappaport

Enrollment: 24
Number of students responding: 5

 8.901 is a graduate class discussing the fundamentals of astrophysics. This summary gives the comments of the five students who replied to our survey during Fall 1998.

Class members almost universally praised Professor Saul Rappaport. They found his lectures excellent, extremely clear, thorough, and praised the preparedness of both the lectures and the handouts. However, he received comments about how his notation was unclear, his writing on the board too small, and that he would very occasionally not quantitatively explain what was happening.

Students praised the course content as well, calling it thorough and interesting. One student found the portion about red dwarfs too fast. One commented that the use of a computer for plotting data was not valuable, and another felt that the textbook needed improvement - suggesting that Professor Rappaport should write one.