According to a friend of mine in California who went through the process. Grading on the bar exam there is simple. On every test, 50% pass and 50% fail. You either make the cut or retake the test. Somewhere around 70-80% of people fail to pass on the first try if I recall correctly.
He was not much fun to be around when he finished law school and was cramming for the bar. He passed it on the 2nd attempt.
California is considered to be a more difficult bat exam that other states because it has a notoriously low passage rate. Note, there are some caveats to that because California is the only state where ANYONE can take the exam, JD or no, so that obviously has a depressive effect on pass rates. Moreover, you are less likely to pass all bar exams the more you retake and the global pass rates for the exam don’t factor in retakers, so it’s a weird stat that is not as informative as a lot of people make it.
Nevertheless, bar exams (and really almost all exams in law school) are curved. It isn’t targeting a 50/50 rate, I believe, but the stat you’re looking at is total pass rate per exam versus pass rate for first time test takers. You get many repeats per exam.
According to a friend of mine in California who went through the process. Grading on the bar exam there is simple. On every test, 50% pass and 50% fail. You either make the cut or retake the test. Somewhere around 70-80% of people fail to pass on the first try if I recall correctly.
He was not much fun to be around when he finished law school and was cramming for the bar. He passed it on the 2nd attempt.
70-80% fail on their first try, and on every test, 50% pass and 50% fail. ???
California is considered to be a more difficult bat exam that other states because it has a notoriously low passage rate. Note, there are some caveats to that because California is the only state where ANYONE can take the exam, JD or no, so that obviously has a depressive effect on pass rates. Moreover, you are less likely to pass all bar exams the more you retake and the global pass rates for the exam don’t factor in retakers, so it’s a weird stat that is not as informative as a lot of people make it.
Nevertheless, bar exams (and really almost all exams in law school) are curved. It isn’t targeting a 50/50 rate, I believe, but the stat you’re looking at is total pass rate per exam versus pass rate for first time test takers. You get many repeats per exam.