PH’s obsession with topnotchers

I am writing this in the wake of the 2025 bar exam results released by the Supreme Court. To every one of the 5,594 bar passers (including the Top 20), congratulations. I simply hope that you will do well in your new legal careers, and that you will fulfill your duties to the fullest extent with honor and distinction.

That being said, I bemoan the Philippines’ continuing obsession with topnotchers in every major board and bar exam, one that is unusual elsewhere in the world. I agree with the main purpose of the licensure exams, that is, to gauge one’s theoretical competence for one’s chosen profession (whether nursing or accountancy or the legal bar). But the topnotcher system in place for decades, in my humble view, has twisted the exams into an exercise of vanity, as reflected for instance by the universities and review centers using the exam results as a marketing exercise to boast of their own superiority and to single out their own favorable students/takers for special treatment at the expense of other equally deserving individuals, and by media’s outsized coverage of individual topnotchers.

Of course, this particular view is rather unpopular; after all, who wouldn’t love relishing the sweet victory and the moment of fame that comes with being a topnotcher, not to mention the numerous perks and career advantages. My view isn’t meant to demean the hundreds of Filipino topnotchers past and present, who have gone on to establish their careers in various fields, some of them with distinction, or the thousands of hopefuls seeking to pass for the opportunity to enter their chosen professions. But if other countries that also mandate licensure exams for specific professions can live without the topnotcher system, I don’t see why we shouldn’t go that way.

M. F. Torres,

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mfctorres@addu.edu.ph