SAN DIEGO - In an apparent bid to improve its low bar pass statistics, the City University of New York School of Law (CUNY) offered some underperforming students a grant if they would wait to sit for the bar exam until February 2013. The grant, offered to academically struggling students, would boost CUNY’s bar pass rate for first-time takers and improve its overall performance rate for 2012. It’s important for CUNY to keep the 2012 performance rate above 75% (which they have failed to do for the last two years) in order to avoid sanctions from the American Bar Association.
At only 67 percent, CUNY had the lowest first-time takers bar pass rate of all 15 law schools in New York state on the last bar exam in July 2011.