New BJCP Exam Format - Existing Recognized judges will need to take tasting exam!?

[jamest22]

Today I read the document that outlines the new BJCP exam and ranking structure to take effect 1 April (provided here). It appears that for existing recognized BJCP judges, even those who scored above a 70 on the written and tasting portion of the old exam, the only way to "level up" to the Certified rank will now be to take the new tasting exam.

As a Recognized BJCP judge, this is irritating to me given the difficulty and inconvenience involved in finding and attending BJCP exam sessions. I have the score necessary to become Certified under the old system, now I'll need to take another exam to get it.

Anyway, I just wanted to share the news and see what anyone else here has heard about this (and vent a little).

 

[weirdboy]

The new online exam only takes a couple of hours, and you can take it any time.

The new tasting exam is more comprehensive than the old one, and in theory there are going to be a lot more of them now, so it will be easier to find one close to you and get scheduled for it.

From reading the guidelines, it is not exactly clear what you have to do if you have already scored high enough to rank Certified, but are lacking the requisite judging points. My guess is that nothing changes for that case, but I could be wrong. Why don't you contact them and find out?

 

[jamest22]

From reading the guidelines, it is not exactly clear what you have to do if you have already scored high enough to rank Certified, but are lacking the requisite judging points. My guess is that nothing changes for that case, but I could be wrong.

See section 3 part 1a http://www.bjcp.org/docs/BJCP_Exam_Structure.pdf

"Their previous scores on the tasting exam will not be applied since the six-beer
entrance exam presents a more rigorous challenge than judging four beers in the tasting portion
of the legacy exam"

 

[weirdboy]

Yes, I read that part.

I guess maybe that means you need to retake the tasting portion. But again, the idea is that the online exam is going to make it easier to find and take the tasting portion. The huge bottleneck in the written (legacy) exam was always that there are only so many graders, and it takes a lot of time to grade those essay questions. The online exam dramatically reduces the workload necessary to grade exams, allowing more tasting exams to be administered which require much less effort to grade.

 

[jamest22]

Update. I had some correspondence with a BJCP exam director and he clarified this portion of the new exam policy for me. He said that there was some poor wording in the initial version of the policy document that lead to some confusion. The document has now been updated to correct this.

Basically, he said that the new exam structure only applies if you need a higher exam score to advance in rank. Existing judges are still on track to earn the highest rank that the legacy exam qualified them for by earning points. The policy has been updated to read as follows:

“The differences between the new and old exam structures may result in some existing judges having a rank without quite meeting the criteria in the above table. However, they are grandfathered into their current level since Table 1 only applies for those needing a higher exam score to qualify for a promotion. Otherwise, their existing judging and tasting scores are retained and they continue on their current trajectories to the next judging level by earning experience points.”