Reviews of professor Stephen Cartier

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Professor Cartier is a fantastic professor. He really cares for his students and wants them to learn. One thing:
Cartier's exams are super difficult. You will leave the first exam feeling terrible. HOWEVER, he always curves the exams. Even if you think you fail the first exam, you CAN get a good grade in his class (not that grades are everything).

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Absolute legend. Always willing to help you understand a topic. His tests could survive a nuclear apocalypse, but you learn so much!

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
exams are extremely application based and he picks the smallest topics from class and gives entire exam questions about them. makes tons of dad jokes and is a likable guy, but his class is evil

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Cartier is funny but in the lectures and lecture videos, he does an okay job of explaining stuff, but not a good or great job. He doesn't go in-depth so when you get to the homework and classwork problems, you will OFTEN be very confused. His tests are also very difficult and there is very little review material for preparation for the exams.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Professor Cartier is one of Amherst's best and most caring professors. His exams are challenging, but they help you to become a better thinker. He knows how to make abstract concepts easy to understand. I wish I could have had more classes with him.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Cartier's exams are hard because they are application based they test your ability to apply information learned to questions you have never seen before rather than memorization. Some people do better in the class because everyone has different levels of how they can apply what they know to harder questions and some have a stronger chem background.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
The tests are hard because they are application based. Your performance in this class will be based on how will you understand the material AND how will you be able to apply what you know to do questions you saw before rather than questions you have seen previously. AP Chem may help because some who took it got an A, but some got lower.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Didn't like his pedagogy: flipped classroom-based model, which could be difficult for people who need to be taught the concepts vs. trying to understand them for the first time. Tests are really difficult, but they are curved, so as long as you go to office hours to understand the concepts and study for exams, the grade shouldn't be a concern.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
If you can do application-based questions and you understand the material well from class packets and homework you will have a good experience in this class. The issue is everyone has different levels of how well they can apply what they know to unfamiliar questions they have not seen before which is why some people struggle and others don't.