When Colin Darnell received his bar exam results in December, he had a sneaking suspicion his failing grade may not have matched his test effort. That’s because he was one of several New York online bar exam takers to experience software issues during the assessment.
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According to Colin, two separate Multistate Performance Tests were submitted to the test taking system, the first when software support attempted to fix his technical issues remotely. Unfortunately for Darnell the software graded a blank MPT instead of his completed version.
While taking his exam, the ExamSoft software was not recording the MPT, so Darnell called their support line. After they erroneously stated he could finish the test unrecorded, he decided to contact the New York State Board of Law Examiners. They confirmed his belief that no test will be accepted without a recording.
Colin then called ExamSoft support again, and while on that call he decided to withdraw from the timed test. Instead of waiting idle, Darnell decided to tweet about his experience. It gained almost 50 retweets and shortly after John McAlary, executive director of the New York State Board of Law Examiners, called to address the issue. He assured Darnell that he could finish the exam after the support team fixed the problem by accessing his laptop through Zoom.
One month later, upon reading his results Colin tweeted that he did not pass the bar, but kept scoring error suspicions to himself.
He did ask the New York State Board of Law Examiners for his test answers, and says he received a voicemail from McAlary on Jan. 19, informing him there were issues with his results. McAlary called back two days later with news that the correct MPT was graded, and Darnell in fact did pass the New York bar. The score skyrocketed from a 247 to a 288.
McAlary addressed the situation in an email to the ABA Journal.
“The board recently discovered that the MPT answer uploaded on exam day was from the first answer file rather than the second file even though he completed the MPT in that second answer file. As soon as the board became aware of the issue this week, the board corrected it, and he passed the exam. The problem occurred only with this candidate. We are working with ExamSoft to ensure that it will not happen again,”
Colin places the blame with ExamSoft. Taking the bar is both a stressful and rewarding time for exam takers, but Darnell says he “would not wish what I went through on anyone.”
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