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Going Against All Odds: The Story of a Board Topnotcher
Ronnie V. Amorado
April 23, 2024
Engr. Rey M. Arcabal, Top 1 Mechanical Engineering Licensure Examination 2024
Life at best is bittersweet.
Poverty is a very compelling motivator. This is the poignant story of this year’s topnotcher, Engr. Rey M. Arcabal. He landed Top 1 in the 2024 Mechanical Engineering licensure examination, besting among the 6,770 examinees. With only 4,458 who passed, Rey came home with a helming 93.45% passing rate. This is the first for the Mechanical Engineering (ME) program and the first for the College of Engineering Education (CEE). The UM batch of examinees also performed very well. 42 out 44 (95.45%) passed, giving the university an excellent lead above the 65.45% national passing rate. This is the highest for the ME and the CEE.
In his testimony during the Convocation program last Friday, March 15, where Engr. Arcabal was rewarded his million incentive, he shared:
“This achievement has not only changed the course of my life but has also offered me an opportunity to break free from the chains of poverty that once gripped me. Growing up in poverty was not easy. My family struggled to make ends meet, to put food on the table, and keep a roof over our heads. I watched my parents work long hours at multiple jobs just to pay the bills, and I knew that I had to do something to break the cycle of poverty that had trapped us for generations. I made a vow to myself that I would do whatever it takes to escape poverty and create a better life for myself and my future family. I refused to let my circumstances define me, and instead, I used them as motivation to push myself further. There were times when I felt like giving up, when the weight of poverty seemed too heavy to bear. But I reminded myself that I was stronger than my circumstances, and that I had the power to change my life for the better.”
A major theme behind Rey’s journey and success is poverty. But because of education in the university, this is the poverty that drives the students to brave and overcome in order to succeed. Poverty most often impedes, debilitates, and discourages. But not in UM. Rey’s story resonates well with that of Honey Jay D. Bacus, the first Top 1 in 2014 under the Social Work program of the College of Arts & Sciences. Honey was also a tale of tempest, and whose success in the licensure examination turned out to be an exhilarating inspiration. Her million incentive was used to buy a house as her family was living in a squatter area.
Rey’s father is in subsistence farming and the mother doing intermittent odd jobs. Born on September 30, 1999, Rey availed of the free basic education in Samal Island where his family is residing. He went to the Caliclic Elementary School and finished in 2012; went to the Mambago National High School and finished in 2018; and applied for DOST collegiate scholarship and joined the University of Mindanao where he graduated in 2023. His DOST scholarship helped a lot to cover his tuition and allowances for his entire college in ME. They are four in the siblings, with Rey being the third. All three are male broods and the youngest being the only girl who is now in Senior High School. Rey’s humbling journey, together with the stories of other Top 1’s and other placers of UM, are worthy of emulation by other students and a continuing inspiration of the teachers in the university.
Crucible. ME’s Program Head, Engr. Cresencio ‘The Enciong’ P. Genobiagon, Jr., was very evocative in his closing remarks during the Convocation:
“We all stand in the presence of diamonds in the rough… [these] individuals who have proven that brilliance often emerges from the crucible of perseverance… They have shown us that the pursuit of greatness requires not just talent, but an unyielding spirit that refuses to be broken by challenges.”
The university’s educational philosophy of polishing diamonds in the rough is made alive and more meaningful by the stories of these topnotchers. Excellence is not just an intellectual virtue; excellence likewise possesses economic value. Not only because of the incentives and the reputation of the school, but more importantly because of the potentials created by the prestige of being a topnotcher. Being one brings with it the virtues of humility, perseverance, and the doggedness to overcome difficulties in life. These are the traits that land our students in good employ. Especially those coming from poverty.
Education indeed is a great equalizer in society, as advocated in the works of several novelists and statesmen, Horace Mann, Michael Welch, Jimmy Smits, Dave Heineman. Even the former UN Secretary General, Koffi Annan declared that as “education is the great equalizer of our time, it gives hope to the hopeless and creates chances for those without.”