It’s mid April, and you know what that means: thousands of law school graduates have started to frantically refresh websites and run to their mailboxes to see if they were able to pass the February bar exam. What bad news did the first round of results bring for law school graduates?

Last week, North Carolina mailed its bar exam results to test-takers. As Above the Law readers know, the state’s results are usually shrouded in secrecy. North Carolina does not publicly publish the number of people who have taken its exam, much less its overall passage rates, but thanks to a law school’s emails to students, we’ve been able to gather all of that information. These results are nothing to write home about.

Thanks to an email we believe was sent by the dean of Elon University School of Law, we know that the February 2018 passage rate for first-time takers was 48.10 percent, while the overall passage rate was 33.07 percent. The average pass rate for first-time takers in February 2017 was 44.44 percent, so we’re looking at an increase in passage for first-time takers of 3.66 percentage points. This year’s passage rates are still rather low, and because we’ve seen the school-by-school results, we think we know which schools may be the culprits — and one of them dragged down the pass rates more than the others, even though the school doesn’t even exist anymore.

Four North Carolina law schools saw overall passage rates that either hovered around or fell well below the 30 percent range. At one of those law schools, ZERO first-time test-takers passed the exam. Those law schools are North Carolina Central University, Wake Forest (WTF?), Elon, and of course, Charlotte School of Law (RIP).

We’ll get Wake Forest’s results out of the way first because this is just so odd. Wake’s pass rate for first-time takers was 42.86 percent and its pass rate for repeat takers was 25.00 percent, for an overall passage rate of 33.33 percent. Only 15 students from the school took the exam, but this still seems… strange. What’s going on?

Next up, we’ve got Elon Law. We’re hearing that because Elon sent out its results email so early last year — before test-takers even received notice from the State Bar of whether or not they’d passed — that this year, the Bar waited a while before sending the school-by-school results to deans. Way to go, Elon! We wish we could give such a compliment to the school over its test results. While the school did much better this year (last year, its passage rate for first-timers was 0.00 percent), Elon’s pass rate for first-time takers was 40.00 percent and its pass rate for repeat takers was 20.00 percent, for an overall passage rate of 35.00 percent. Eighty graduates from Elon took the exam in February. Better keep shaping up, Elon, or you might be in trouble.

Speaking of a law school in trouble, next up, we’ve got NCCU, and the results from this school are very concerning; after all, the school was recently notified that it was out of compliance with ABA accreditation standards. NCCU’s pass rate for first-time takers was 56.25 percent and its pass rate for repeat takers was 20.69 percent, for an overall passage rate of 28.38 percent. This is incredibly underwhelming, and at 74, NCCU had the third-highest number of graduates take the exam this past February. This likely won’t look good to ABA accreditors, but at least the school’s first-time passage rate was much better than it was last February — by a margin of 28.98 percentage points.

Last, and apparently least according to these test results, is the dearly departed Charlotte Law. Eighty-four graduates from Charlotte took the North Carolina bar exam in February. Charlotte’s pass rate for first-time takers was 0.00 percent and its pass rate for repeat takers was 10.96 percent, for an overall passage rate of 9.52 percent. In February 2017, the law school’s passage rate for its 72 first-time takers was 25.00 percent, its passage rate for its 94 repeat takers was 18.09 percent, and its overall passage rate was 21.08 percent. There are many reasons this law school closed, and this is just one of them. Take a look at Charlotte’s bar exam results over the years:

Exam Date First Time Bar Passage Rate State Average Rate July 2009 67.3% 80.63% Feb. 2010 73.3% 68.86% July 2010 87.0% 79.8% Feb. 2011 75.0% 72.3% July 2011 78.79% 82.19% Feb. 2012 53.13% 60.24% July 2012 68.22% 78.76% Feb. 2013 69.8% 62.4% July 2013 57.8% 71.01% Feb. 2014 60.0% 64.15% July 2014 56.0% 70.6% Feb. 2015 40.5% 54.5% July 2015 47.1% 67.1% Feb. 2016 34.7% 51.1% July 2016 45.24% 65.90% Feb. 2017 25.00% 44.44% July 2017 45.45% 61.75% Feb. 2018 0.00% 33.03%

God, that’s depressing. At least with Charlotte’s closure, the suffering has ended.

Which North Carolina law school did the best on the state’s exam in February 2018? Flip to the next page to see the bar exam passage rates for the following law schools: Elon, Charlotte, North Carolina Central, Campbell, University of North Carolina, Wake Forest, and Duke. Congrats if you passed, and if not, better luck next time!

Staci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.