Is failing your exams really that bad? We find out.

We’ve sorted through the toughest exams in the world — the Gaokao, the bar, the MCAT, the lot. We know that they are important. We know they are hard.

But really, how bad could failing your exams actually be?

Failing an exam is a lot of students’ nightmares, especially when it comes to ones that they’ve studied so hard for. With major exams such as the Gaokao and the bar, students often feel like if they fail, it means they’ve ruined everything.

So we went looking for actual case studies — real people who failed one of these career-gatekeeping exams — to see what happened next.

TL;DR: The pattern that emerged aren’t what the panic threads would have you believe.

Case study 1: Jack Ma and the Gaokao

Before Alibaba, before becoming one of China’s richest men, Jack Ma sat the Gaokao — widely known as the single toughest in the world — and failed it twice. On his first attempt, he scored just 1 point out of 120 in maths; on his second, 19. He spent the years in between working odd jobs, including a stint he couldn’t even land as a KFC employee. It was only on his third attempt, in 1984, that he scraped into Hangzhou Normal University — not a top-tier school, and below the undergraduate cutoff, but enough to get him into the English department, where a new path for him opened up.

There, he actually rose to become one of the top five students in the foreign language department and eventually chairman of the student union. After he graduated in 1988 with a degree in English, he became a lecturer in English and international trade at Hangzhou Dianzi University.

The takeaway isn’t “grades don’t matter” — Ma still needed a university place to build the network and skills that led to Alibaba. It’s that which university, and on what attempt, mattered a lot less than most of us think.

Case study 2: Kamala Harris and the California Bar

The Bar exam, and California’s version specifically, is one of the toughest professional exams out there. Kamala Harris sat it in 1989, straight out of UC Hastings College of Law, and failed. In her memoir, she described the news as devastating. She retook it the following year, passed, and was admitted to the California Bar in 1990.

Then, the rest is history: deputy district attorney, San Francisco DA, California Attorney General, US Senator, and eventually Vice President. None of it hinged on passing the Bar on the first try. Try, and try again.

Case study 3: FDR and the New York Bar

Long before Harris, Franklin D. Roosevelt failed the New York Bar Exam on his first attempt. He passed on his second, dropped out of Columbia Law School once he had, and went into practising law — a career that turned out to be a brief detour on the way to four terms as US president. (Yes, in case you forgot, FDR was the only US president to serve more than two times as he was a popular wartime president.)

He’s one of a long list of American politicians and public figures with a failed Bar attempt somewhere in their record, alongside Hillary Clinton, who passed the Arkansas Bar the same year she failed the DC one, and Michelle Obama, who failed the Illinois Bar before practising IP law at Sidley & Austin.

It seems that success is more about persistence and perseverance than it is about getting it right the first time.

Case study 4: A resident doctor and the USMLE

Medical licensing exams sit near the top of “toughest exams” lists for good reason — the stakes feel existential because they’re tied directly to whether you can practise. Dr Stephanie Moss, now a psychiatry resident in Chicago, failed Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) twice before eventually matching into residency. She’s since become vocal about the fact that a Step failure isn’t the “red flag” med school culture treats it as.

The USMLE is a three-step medical licensing examination programme required to practise medicine in the US.

The numbers back her up. According to the American Medical Association, roughly 70% of US MD students who fail Step 1 on their first attempt pass on the next one, over 72% still go on to match into residency, and 96.7% eventually become licensed physicians. The exception worth flagging: a Step 1 failure can narrow your options in the most competitive specialties — cardiology, hem-onc, GI — where some programmes screen it out automatically. So “ruined” isn’t accurate, but “narrowed” sometimes is.

So, does failing actually ruin your career?

Based on the case studies: rarely, and almost never on its own. The exams with the clearest “life goes on” evidence — Gaokao, Bar, USMLE — all have well-documented people who failed and still reached the top of their fields.

However, none of this is to say the panic is silly or overblown. It’s worth sitting with the other side of it for a second, because the fear is tracking something real.

For one, “eventually” is doing a lot of work in every one of these stories. Jack Ma’s third Gaokao attempt cost him roughly two years. Harris’s retake cost her a year before she could start practising. A failed USMLE Step attempt can mean an unplanned leave of absence, a delayed graduation, or being filtered out of the most competitive specialties before you even get to interview. None of that is nothing.

Lost time is a real cost, not just a feeling, especially for anyone without the financial cushion or family support to absorb a gap year or a second attempt.

There’s also the fact that these exams don’t happen in a vacuum. A failed result can mean a tense conversation with parents who’ve spent years and money on tuition, a scholarship that’s suddenly at risk, or a visa or work permit tied to a graduation timeline that doesn’t bend for a retake.

For international students specifically, “just try again next year” isn’t always a neutral piece of advice — it can carry a cost in fees, visa status, or family expectation that a domestic student retaking the same exam wouldn’t face.

We’re not saying you shouldn’t worry. We’re just pointing out that the worst-case story your brain tells you (i.e. results permanently close the door) is usually wrong.

But the in-between cost — the lost time, the money, the awkward conversations, the narrowed options — is often real, and it’s fair to feel bad about that part even while knowing your career isn’t actually over.

So, study hard, but don’t be too fixated on “failing” that you lose sight of “trying again.”