# GPT-4: the model that sat the bar exam

URL: https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/blog/gpt-4-the-model-that-sat-the-bar-exam
Published: 2026-10-09
Author: Roman Aglaganov, Full-stack developer
Category: Models
Region: North America
Tags: benchmarks

> When OpenAI released GPT-4 in March 2023, its headline claim was a simulated bar exam score around the top 10% of test takers. The claim aged in interesting ways, and so did the model.

![Typographic cover: GPT-4, 14 March 2023, the model that sat the bar exam](https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/api/media/file/gpt4-1.png)

ChatGPT launched in November 2022 running on GPT-3.5. Four months later, on 14 March 2023, OpenAI released GPT-4, and the conversation about AI shifted from “fun toy” to “wait, it can do that?”

## The exam results

OpenAI’s technical report listed GPT-4’s scores on human exams. The one that made headlines: on a simulated US bar exam, it scored around the top 10% of test takers, where GPT-3.5 had been around the bottom 10%. It also did well on SAT, GRE and many Advanced Placement exams.

Later research argued that the bar exam percentile was flattering, because it was compared against a pool of test takers that included many repeat candidates; against first-time takers, the estimate came out lower. Still impressive for software, slightly less “AI is now a lawyer”.

## Seeing, not just reading

GPT-4 could also accept images as input: a photo of a fridge’s contents, a hand-drawn website sketch or a chart. Multimodal models, which handle text, images and later audio together, became the standard.

## The secrecy

The report was notable for what it left out. Citing competition and safety, OpenAI declined to share the model’s size, architecture, training data or compute, a break from the field’s habit of publishing details, and a sign of how commercial AI had become.

**Legacy:** GPT-4 set the bar that rivals chased for the next year, and its successors, starting with GPT-4o in 2024, made voice conversation and multimodal input everyday features.

## Sources

- [GPT-4 Technical Report (arXiv:2303.08774)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08774)