MANILA, Philippines — Three ladies and three gentlemen stood out from over 5,500 Bar examinees for landing the coveted Top Five, after years of grueling preparations.
The University of the Philppines' (UP) Nielson Pangan, who ranked first in the 2013 Bar Exams with an 85.80 percent rating, graduated magna cum laude from the New Era University in 2008, majoring in legal management.
Pangan entered the UP College of Law and graduated with a juris doctorate in 2013 and was immediately hired at the Migallos and Luna Law Office in Makati City as an associate.
Related story: UP graduate leads 2013 Bar Exams passers
Mark Oyales, also from UP, garnered 85.45 percent from the examination, hails from Babatngyon, Leyte.
Oyales admitted in a Facebook post in 2010 that law wrecked "havoc" in his life. "For almost a year, I was made captive, detained and secluded in an abstract wall of frustration, fear, anxiety," he wrote, but afterwards thanked God for inspiring him.
He now works for the Villaraza Cruz Marcelo and Angangco Law Offices, after a stint as a research associate at the Institute of Human Rights at the UP Law Center.
Ateneo de Manila University's Dianna Louise Wilwayco, who is tied with Oyales on the second spot, might have buried her nose in law books the past years, but an online query reveals that she worked for Entablado, a university-based performing arts group, as an undergraduate student.
"I'm a law student who has a pseudo social life," Wilwayco admitted in one of her various online profiles.
Bar third placer Rudy Ortea with 84.20 percent from the University of Batangas has been known as a hardworking instructor at the Lyceum of the Philippines University, also in Batangas.
Ortea also topped the Criminology Board Exam as an undergrad from Lyceum, afterwhich he worked at the university's forensic laboratory and taught several subjects under the criminology program.
Fourth ranked Eden Catherine Mopia, who received an 84.05 percent mark, studied at the UP College of Law and worked for the Office of the Solicitor General and is well loved by her colleagues at the Portia Sorority.
Newly wed Tercel Maria Mercado-Gephert from Cebu City's University of San Carlos, meanwhile, was pregnant while studying for the Bar and gave birth last January, her friend revealed.
In 2012, Mercado married Karl Gephart, an American, with whom she built a startup business Merchart Resources, LLC based in Texas.