2020 bar exam saw major swings in pass rates at some institutions
Given all the variance we saw in bar exam administration in 2020, it’s perhaps no surprise to see some significant swings in how individual schools performed on the bar exam. I looked at one metric: a school’s modal bar exam jurisdiction, and how it over- or under-performed relative to the statewide average. That’s the USNWR metric (even though a state’s modal jurisdiction might change year over year). California significantly lowered its cut score, for instance; other states had a version of “diploma privilege,” which assuredly altered what bar exam test-takers looked like. Schools that always do extremely well are not going to be in the top of any list of annual year-over-year changes. And some gain by gaining; others gain by staying still while others perform worse.
I pulled this data from the ABA spreadsheets. The ABA did not include some data for some schools in diploma privilege-heavy jurisdictions, so those schools are omitted. Here are the ten schools that did the best year-over-year in terms of their performance compared to the statewide average:
| 2019 pass pct | 2019 state pct | 2020 pass pct | 2020 state pct | Delta | |
| San Francisco | 38.7% | 69.1% | 76.1% | 77.9% | 28.6 |
| Roger Williams | 68.9% | 82.1% | 70.0% | 60.0% | 23.16 |
| Northern Kentucky | 62.5% | 79.5% | 85.4% | 80.7% | 21.75 |
| Southwestern | 56.2% | 69.1% | 82.7% | 77.9% | 17.84 |
| District of Columbia | 52.0% | 72.1% | 70.6% | 75.0% | 15.66 |
| Hofstra | 60.2% | 84.1% | 76.6% | 85.9% | 14.61 |
| Georgetown | 90.8% | 84.1% | 96.2% | 75.0% | 14.53 |
| Chapman | 59.3% | 69.1% | 80.1% | 77.9% | 12.13 |
| Oklahoma City | 69.5% | 84.2% | 83.7% | 86.6% | 11.77 |
| Tulane | 76.3% | 74.1% | 88.9% | 75.1% | 11.59 |
Maybe unsurprisingly, a few California schools saw dramatic improvement as the cut score was lowered. Others like Georgetown appeared to find success as the bar rate suffered elsewhere.
Here are the ten schools that saw the biggest declines in year-over-year performance compared to the statewide average:
| 2019 pass pct | 2019 state pct | 2020 pass pct | 2020 state pct | Delta | |
| Atlanta's John Marshall | 63.1% | 65.4% | 58.3% | 76.1% | -15.6 |
| Chicago-Kent | 81.1% | 74.1% | 74.3% | 81.0% | -13.8 |
| Western State | 56.7% | 69.1% | 51.7% | 77.9% | -13.7 |
| Belmont | 97.1% | 81.0% | 82.4% | 80.0% | -13.7 |
| Ohio Northern | 95.0% | 79.5% | 86.4% | 84.3% | -13.4 |
| Tulsa | 91.8% | 84.2% | 81.0% | 86.6% | -13.3 |
| Faulkner | 81.8% | 86.3% | 62.2% | 79.6% | -13 |
| Pepperdine | 80.3% | 69.1% | 76.1% | 77.9% | -13 |
| CUNY | 74.5% | 84.1% | 65.4% | 85.9% | -10.9 |
| Lewis & Clark | 84.3% | 80.9% | 79.4% | 86.8% | -10.7 |