Hi. Board topnotcher here. I agree with a lot of your points, especially regarding review centers.

To be perfectly frank, my topping the licensure exam for my field of work was mostly the product of my four years of exemplary college education at a renown university, personal studying, and an aptitude for my field because of my natural passion for it. I enrolled in review centers because it was expected, I guess? However, I barely attended the sessions. If I did, I'd often ditch the class because it was too "rote memorization" for me.

When I topped the board, the review centers legit fought over me, trying to get me as a lecturer for future review sessions. And I was like ok chill, I can do y'all. What's important is spreading the knowledge and helping others, right?

Wrong. What's important, apparently, is money. The brand. The marketing. That's when I realized that these review centers aren't in it to help others become professionals. They're commercial establishments, and the topnotchers are the ads. They dazzle us with promises of wealth and fame, but it's pretty much obvious we're only there to market them. We were there to sell books. We were there for them to monetize board exam "secrets" that we would have given for free.

The topnotcher system needs to be abolished because it makes professionalism a competitive rather than a collaborative effort.

(Personal rant: it's honestly a shit ton of stress if you top the board since there's so much pressure to always be excellent. People tend to be harsher critics if anything falls short. As an introverted person who was suddenly thrust into the spotlight, I hated being topnotcher.)