Dagupan graduate tops CPA board

DAGUPAN CITY—Ralley Paragas was ecstatic when his sister woke him up about 2 a.m. on Friday to inform him that he topped this year’s licensure examinations for certified public accountants (CPA).

“It has not actually sunk in yet,” said Paragas, who graduated summa cum laude in April this year from the Colegio de Dagupan here.

Paragas garnered 92.86 percent to top the exams given this month by the Professional Regulation Commission Board of Accountancy.

Only 5,468 of 13,317 examinees who took the tests in the cities of Manila, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, Legazpi and Lucena passed.

“All of our hardships and prayers when we were reviewing finally bore fruit. I thank all those who helped us,” said Paragas.

Topping the exams was something Paragas said he did not expect. “But you would know you passed if you prepared well,” he said.

For Evelyn Paragas, her son’s achievements rewarded all of their sacrifices. “God is good,” she said when the Inquirer reached her in a small backyard piggery farm in Barangay Mangin here.

“All my children studied hard. They had no choice. After my husband suffered a stroke in 2008, it had been very difficult for us,” she said.

Paragas’ father, Recto, was a car mechanic, who set up a shop in Barangay Tambac here, where they built a two-story house in a crowded neighborhood in Sitio Beneg.

“When he suffered a stroke, I took over the shop. But then we had to eventually close it because our clients wanted my husband to do the repair work,” she said.

She said she and her husband were lucky that their children studied well, despite the economic difficulties they had suffered.

Paragas is the youngest in a brood of three. The eldest, Ricky, 24, is a mechanical engineer while the second sibling, Relyn, 22, finished BS Biology at the University of the Philippines Baguio.