California Bar Exam, By the Numbers

For the July 2008 California Bar Exam:

• 8637 people took the exam
  
• 61.7% of exam takers passed
• 75% of first time takers passed
• 27% of repeaters passed
• From California, but non-ABA, accredited schools (such as mine), 37% of first time takers and 17% of repeaters passed
• From SJCL (my school), 23 out of the 49 people who graduated in my class passed, for a 47% pass rate. However, I know at least 2 of those people did not take the exam. If there were others who also did not take it, the pass rate will be at or above 50%. (The school's pass rate had been hovering around 30% for the past few years, so this is a significant improvement.)
• Of our 23 passers, 11 were male and 12 were female; 9 were students who completed the law program in 3 years and 14 completed in 4 or 5 years.
• Of the 3 year program exam passers, the 9 came from an original class size of about 90 people, meaning that only 10% of the people who began law school at SJCL in August 2005 finished in 3 years and passed the bar exam on the first attempt.
• All of the students who graduated with high honors or distinction (the top 20% of the class) passed.
  

Being the nerds that we are, my boyfriend and I had printed out a list of the 2008 graduates and made a prediction for each person, based on what we knew about them, their class rank or GPA, their study habits, their contributions in the classroom, whether or not we thought they would pass or fail. We predicted that 22 of the 49 would pass. And we woke up at 6am yesterday when the results were made public on the state bar web site and checked each person's name to see how accurately our predictions were. While we made some errors on the results for some individuals, the overall prediction was only off by 1. Yes, we were pretty proud of ourselves. :)

Congratulations to all who passed! See all of you at school tonight for the reception!