Saturday, January 25, 2014
July 2013 California Bar Exam Results
The July 2013 California bar passage rates by school are out. Here are the results for first-time test-takers for the 21 California ABA-approved law schools, along with each school's U.S. News ranking (California and overall):
|
Bar Pass Rank (Rate) |
School |
US News Rank CA (Overall) |
|
1 (91.0%) |
Stanford |
1 (2) |
|
2 (88.2%) |
UCLA |
3 (17) |
|
3 (87.7%) |
Loyola-L.A. |
8 (68) |
|
4 (85.5%) |
USC |
4 (18) |
|
5 (85.3%) |
UC-Berkeley |
2 (9) |
|
6 (85.0%) |
UC-Davis |
5 (38) |
|
7 (80.6%) |
Pepperdine |
7 (61) |
|
8 (77.5%) |
UC-Irvine |
n/r |
|
9 (77.1%) |
Chapman. |
12 (126) |
|
10 (76.1%) |
UC-Hastings |
6 (48) |
|
75.9% |
Statewide Ave. (CA ABA-Approved) |
|
|
11 (75.3%) |
Western State |
Tier 2 |
|
12 (74.7%) |
San Francisco |
13 (144) |
|
13 (74.6%) |
San Diego |
8 (68) |
|
14 (74.2%) |
Southwestern |
Tier 2 |
|
15 (73.0%) |
Santa Clara |
10 (96) |
|
16 (68.5%) |
California Western |
Tier 2 |
|
17 (67.7%) |
La Verne |
n/r |
|
18 (66.9%) |
McGeorge |
11 (124) |
|
19 (64.7%) |
Whittier |
Tier 2 |
|
20 (56.4%) |
Golden Gate |
Tier 2 |
|
21 (50.3%) |
Thomas Jefferson |
Tier 2 |
Here are the out-of-state schools with the highest and lowest pass rates:
- 95.9%: Harvard (98 test-takers)
- 95.7%: NYU (47)
- 94.7%: Cornell (19)
- 94.1%: Boston University (17)
- 93.3%: Yale (30)
- 91.7%: Illinois (12), University of Washington (12)
- 89.5%: Texas (19)
- 88.9%: Pennsylvania (27)
- 87.8%: Michigan (49)
- 25.0%: Howard (8), Syracuse (8)
- 22.2%: Indiana-Indianapolis (9), Loyola-Chicago (9), UNLV (9)
- 21.4%: Arizona (14)
- 21.0%: Phoenix (19)
- 12.5%: Thomas Cooley (16)
- 10.0%: Florida Coastal (10), Suffolk (10)
Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/01/july-2013.html
Comments
Harvard had 98 test takers? How does anyone at Yale fail the bar? How do Illinois and Washington have higher pass rates than Michigan, Penn, and Texas?
If 1 in 4 of a school's students fail the bar, doesn't that say a lot about the school? We should seriously tie federal loans with default rates. I can't believe students at TJ are paying back their loans if they can't even practice the law.
Eric, I don't think the bar prep. course has much to do with it. Almost all were probably taking BarBri or Kaplan. They are equivalent test prep companies. I view most bar prep as a commodity these days.
Posted by: HTA | Jan 27, 2014 11:30:45 AM
I find it laughable that Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the oh so elite and prestigious Cal-Irvine Law School, teaches, (and has taught for at least the last decade), con law for BarBri, the preeminent monopoly bar prep course in California!
How embarrassing that a self-proclaimed top 20 law school whose dean teaches a bar prep course only managed to rank 8th in terms of bar passage. You just can't make this stuff up! I can't wait to see how Irvine spins this...
Posted by: anon | Jan 26, 2014 9:23:19 PM
Interesting, but shouldn't we really be ranking the bar review courses, not the law schools, as far as passing the bar exam?
Posted by: Eric Rasmusen | Jan 26, 2014 7:07:10 PM
one reason that the bar passage rates differ significantly is because of the number of students in each class. for instance, the number of students who take the bar form hastings is two times the number of students form stanford who take the bar. with a greater sample size come greater room for error
Posted by: anon | Jan 29, 2014 2:13:18 AM