see - Barring dreams | Opinion, News, The Philippine Star | philstar.com
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The Bar exam is administered by the Supreme Court through the Bar Examination Committee composed of a sitting Justice as chairman and examiners for the eight bar subjects. The Committee determines the level of difficulty of the Bar exam both in terms of questions asked and the manner of checking. Compare the passing rate of the 2012 Bar exam (17.76% although the original figure was supposedly a single digit) to that of the previous year (31.95%). 2012 produced 949 lawyers while the year before, more than double that number (1,913) passed. So what accounts for the difference since both 2011 and 2012 employed the same 60% MCQ – 40% essay format? Was 2011’s high success rate — the highest since 2001 — the result of a new system being test-run for the first time? Were the 2012 questions exponentially more difficult than those in 2011, or were the latter just better calibrated? Was batch 2011 smarter or better prepared than their 2012 counterparts, or did the disparity simply result from strictness or leniency of checking?
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