Statistics on the 2014 Bar Examinations
(Part 2)
by Thads Bentulan
thadsbentulan@gmail.com
RP
vs US Bar
The Philippine bar exam
is the probably one of the hardest bar exams in the world. Why? The “real unadjusted
success rate” of the Philippine bar ranges from 5% in 2007 to 6.7% in 2012 to
13.3% in 2013 and 11.4% in 2014. The usual range is between 5% to 8% real unadjusted
success rate. That’s about 300 to 400 passers out of 6,000 takers. Due to this
low success rate, the Supreme Court regularly issues an en banc resolution
lowering the passing score from 75.00 to, say, 73.00, as in the case of the
2014 bar.
On the other hand, the
American bar is supervised by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE)
which is a non-profit organization, not a bar association, and not the state or
federal Supreme Court. The NCBE creates and scores the multiple-choice
questions. In most states, the bar is only a two-day exam. On the first day is
the written exam, and on the second day is the multiple choice test (MCQ).
This is not the time
to discuss it fully, but the subject coverage of the Philipine bar covering
eight major subjects is extremely broader than that of the American bar which
has around four subjects only. And two of these subjects are just minor
components of one Philippine bar subject. In terms of preparation and study
time, the difference is huge.
By the way, the NCBE
raised worrisome issues recently, because the performance of the American
examinees have deteriorated. Typically, there are two exams per year in most
states. In the last ten previous bar exams, the average success rate of the California
bar is 48% (average number of examinees is 6,500 per bar) and that of New York
bar is 58% (average of 7,700 examinees).
Particularly with
respect to the 2014 bar, the US national bar success rate was 64%; with
California 47% and New York 60%. The states with the highest success rates are
Marianas Islands 88%, Missouri 84%, New Mexico and Iowa 83%, Kansas 82%, New
Hampshire 81%, and Utah 80%. The lowest is Puerto Rico 39%. By the way, 33% of
the NY examinees graduated from foreign schools such as the Philippines;
California 14%.
As you can see, even
their lowest in America is more than double the success rate in the Philippine
bar. And they only have two days for the bar and the second day are MCQ only.
The Americans are
worried about success rates from 80% to 88%? Is the USA a diploma mill of
lawyers? That’s nothing compared to the Philippine 5% to 13% success rate. That’s
how hard the Philippine bar is. You may be tempted to say that our examinees
are not intellectually at par with the Americans but if you have systemic rate
of unadjusted 5%-13% passers over the last 20 years, then that is no longer an
“human intellectual level” issue but a “systemic difficult exam” issue.
Bar
vs. Medical Board
The medical board
exams is the comparable exam to the bar because both are given to post-graduate
degree holders. In the last ten medical board exams the average was 64% success
rate. In particular, for 2014, the success rate for medicine is 81% compared to
11.43% of the bar. So for 2014, only 19% failed the medicine board; only 11%
passed the bar. That’s a diametrical pass-fail ratio.
But let’s look at
actual head counts. Only 512 out of 2,730 failed in the medical board while
only 684 passed the bar, or a mortality of 5,300 individuals out of 5,984! Remember
our example at the outset of an examinee with a grade of 79 in the bar which
would have been pathetic in the medical or CPA board? That person is among the
top 85th rank while 5,300 perished. That’s how impressive that grade
is.
The success rate in
law is so small that it is just equivalent to the failure rate in medicine. Can
we say that, as a group, the barristers are not as knowledgeable as the medical
graduates? Or that the Philippine barristers are not as well-equipped as their
American counterparts? Or, is there something wrong with the current bar format
that reflected a high systemic failure rate?
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