BarBri Thread: People taking Barbri for July 2013 exam Forum

[jawsthegreat]

I don't understand taking the NYMC first.

The essays are more heavily weighted by a factor of 4. The diminishing returns on the NYMC is going to be significant w/ the difference in 25/50 and 30/50 meaning basically nothing for your overall pass rate and if necessary when running out of time it's much easier to mark "A" than it is to type a coherent response to an essay.


But, that's just me.

[ace_of_spades]

How did people do on the mpq2 full day?

shat the bed. it's all just super hard questions. similar to the simulated final exam int he end, or the half-day right before it, or like sets 5/6 in mpq1. its also harder than sets 8/9, which are themselves much harder than sets 1-7. if you can get 50% on test day on questions of that difficulty (probably want 60% on sets 8/9), you are on track. barbri claims 60% is the goal for the mpq2 full day but I call bullshit. the mpq2 insert says their "goals" on that page are based on averages in PACE but since MPQ2 full day is not assigned in pace they have no way to know. i think anything above 45-50% is not great but probably fine, 50-55% is ok/good, 55-65% is great , above 65%... fuck you stop studying. i did find reviewing the answers helpful though because drilling the exceptions to the exceptions makes sure you understand the fundamentals well.

Took the half-day one today (on top of waking up w/ a mini panic attack). Got a 55/100 whereas I've been getting mid-60s to 80s on the other MPQ2s. Felt crappy/angry at how nuanced those questions were.

Thoughts on going forth with the other 100 q sets?

I scored in the mid/high 60's on the Half Day, the SFE, and the first half of the Full Day. I found them all to be roughly equal in difficulty. Quite a few wtf moments and nuances I had never seen or heard of before. Needless to say I'm not going to do the second half of the Full Day. I've moved on to MEE material.

[CG614]

I don't understand taking the NYMC first.

The essays are more heavily weighted by a factor of 4. The diminishing returns on the NYMC is going to be significant w/ the difference in 25/50 and 30/50 meaning basically nothing for your overall pass rate and if necessary when running out of time it's much easier to mark "A" than it is to type a coherent response to an essay.


But, that's just me.

Each essay is actually only worth 8%. The MC is 10%. Plus, if you portion your time correctly, it shouldn't be an issue. Spend an hour on the MC, like Barbri recommends and move on.

[c3pO4]

Just took online test 1 from NCBE. Bottom line - i recommend this to anybody who has only been doing barbri questions.

1- can't stress this point enough--the questions really do NOT feel the same. kind of frustrating because as I expected, doing 1.9k barbri Qs has conditioned me to search for barbri craziness and pick up ghosts of exceptions to exceptions that are not actually there, and I missed a few easy questions as a result and overthought a few hard ones that probably could've been deduced. doing these questions was super helpful to get the feel for how MBE will actually write questions (assuming the MBE is written similarly) (since NCBE is the same body, i think this is not an unreasonable assumption, and in any event cant hurt to see something other than barbri)

2 - timing. it went quick. had about 40 minutes left over. maybe couldve fixed a few wrong answers during test day, although in my exp i have only ever changed one wrong answer to another, or a right to a wrong, have never changed a wrong to a right. ever.

3 - Scaling. it seems the scale is lower than the 10-15 points barbri tells us to expect. not sure if this is a product of the practice test being different from the MBE, or what. Scored 143 scaled, they say average scaled score is 140, my raw was 68/100 so the scaling was 7 points.

4- Relative to barbri performance. I was hitting 75-85% on MPQ2 sets 1-7, 51% on SFE, 54% on MPQ2 full day, 123 (66th percentile) a month ago when we took the midterm. looks like MPQ2 sets 1-7 are a bit easier than this NCBE test, and SFE/Fullday/HalfDay are much harder. i guess the midterm MBE is harder, or maybe i improved since then through studying.

5- I thought overall there were a lot more straitforward/shorter questions but there were still some fairly lengthy/verbose/confusing fact patterns. I think barbri's long Q's did in fact prepare us fairly well for those and were not a waste of time. basically I am not mad bro anymore. Nothing barbri threw at us could be as bad as seeing a question hypo on the bar about FAILING THE BAR, which I saw in this online test...

6- Barbri failed to teach us a few things that were in the NCBE test. This is why I am going to do tests 2 and 3 tomorrow/fri and recommend these tests. the answer explanations do provide good insight and there are a couple trick-mechanisms that NCBE uses to fool us that barbri did not use, despite the fact that I did close to 2k barbri questions to date.... maybe this is a copyright issue?

7- my worst two subjects were crim and torts, which have not been my worst two throughout barbri. weird. i crushed property (-3).

8- as usual, my performance of the last 25 in a 100 question set was worse than my performance on the first 75. not sure how to fix this, but at least it wasn't as pronounced of a difference as i've seen in other 100 question sets.

9- NCBE claims we will be "more motivated" and "more prepared" so not to take anything from these results but I have a hard time believing that. I think I was pretty motivated to not feel like I am on pace to failing, and if anything I will be more tired and freaked out during the actual bar than taking this test, so if anything I would expect scores to go down between these NCBE tests and the real MBE. maybe the scale compensates for this.

overall I'm glad I took it and would strongly recommend spending at least $50 to check it out, even though it's not very reassuring to perform only slightly above average after 2 months of following PACE considering what you hear about people phoning it in until july 4 and then still passing. checked on one-timers and apparently as long as you get 65 on both CPT, with 68% on MBE you can get a 60 on all 6 subject essays (california) and sitll pass the bar.

not feeling barsecure, but not feeling hopeless. meh. take the NCBE test though.

[Stinson]

Isn't the scaling necessarily going to be lower on the practice test because all the questions count, where in the real thing only 190 of 200 do?

[ace_of_spades]

Just took online test 1 from NCBE. Bottom line - i recommend this to anybody who has only been doing barbri questions.

1- can't stress this point enough--the questions really do NOT feel the same. kind of frustrating because as I expected, doing 1.9k barbri Qs has conditioned me to search for barbri craziness and pick up ghosts of exceptions to exceptions that are not actually there, and I missed a few easy questions as a result and overthought a few hard ones that probably could've been deduced. doing these questions was super helpful to get the feel for how MBE will actually write questions (assuming the MBE is written similarly) (since NCBE is the same body, i think this is not an unreasonable assumption, and in any event cant hurt to see something other than barbri)

2 - timing. it went quick. had about 40 minutes left over. maybe couldve fixed a few wrong answers during test day, although in my exp i have only ever changed one wrong answer to another, or a right to a wrong, have never changed a wrong to a right. ever.

3 - Scaling. it seems the scale is lower than the 10-15 points barbri tells us to expect. not sure if this is a product of the practice test being different from the MBE, or what. Scored 143 scaled, they say average scaled score is 140, my raw was 68/100 so the scaling was 7 points.

4- Relative to barbri performance. I was hitting 75-85% on MPQ2 sets 1-7, 51% on SFE, 54% on MPQ2 full day, 123 (66th percentile) a month ago when we took the midterm. looks like MPQ2 sets 1-7 are a bit easier than this NCBE test, and SFE/Fullday/HalfDay are much harder. i guess the midterm MBE is harder, or maybe i improved since then through studying.

5- I thought overall there were a lot more straitforward/shorter questions but there were still some fairly lengthy/verbose/confusing fact patterns. I think barbri's long Q's did in fact prepare us fairly well for those and were not a waste of time. basically I am not mad bro anymore. Nothing barbri threw at us could be as bad as seeing a question hypo on the bar about FAILING THE BAR, which I saw in this online test...

6- Barbri failed to teach us a few things that were in the NCBE test. This is why I am going to do tests 2 and 3 tomorrow/fri and recommend these tests. the answer explanations do provide good insight and there are a couple trick-mechanisms that NCBE uses to fool us that barbri did not use, despite the fact that I did close to 2k barbri questions to date.... maybe this is a copyright issue?

7- my worst two subjects were crim and torts, which have not been my worst two throughout barbri. weird. i crushed property (-3).

8- as usual, my performance of the last 25 in a 100 question set was worse than my performance on the first 75. not sure how to fix this, but at least it wasn't as pronounced of a difference as i've seen in other 100 question sets.

9- NCBE claims we will be "more motivated" and "more prepared" so not to take anything from these results but I have a hard time believing that. I think I was pretty motivated to not feel like I am on pace to failing, and if anything I will be more tired and freaked out during the actual bar than taking this test, so if anything I would expect scores to go down between these NCBE tests and the real MBE. maybe the scale compensates for this.

overall I'm glad I took it and would strongly recommend spending at least $50 to check it out, even though it's not very reassuring to perform only slightly above average after 2 months of following PACE considering what you hear about people phoning it in until july 4 and then still passing. checked on one-timers and apparently as long as you get 65 on both CPT, with 68% on MBE you can get a 60 on all 6 subject essays (california) and sitll pass the bar.

not feeling barsecure, but not feeling hopeless. meh. take the NCBE test though.

Is it possible to print the exam out or do you have to take it online?

[c3pO4]

Is it possible to print the exam out or do you have to take it online?

meant to comment on this. it was really hard for me to focus reading it on the computer, because i've been doing practice q's on paper mostly for the last few weeks. i think my score would increase if i could've crossed out wrong answers as i do normally. no, there was no way to print it out that I saw.

[bgdddymtty]

Isn't the scaling necessarily going to be lower on the practice test because all the questions count, where in the real thing only 190 of 200 do?

This. It's not that the scaling is lower, but that to get an idea of your expected raw MBE score you should multiply by 1.9, not 2. 190 X 68% = 129, so the scaling process here is giving you a 14-point bump.

[c3pO4]

Isn't the scaling necessarily going to be lower on the practice test because all the questions count, where in the real thing only 190 of 200 do?

This. It's not that the scaling is lower, but that to get an idea of your expected raw MBE score you should multiply by 1.9, not 2. 190 X 68% = 129, so the scaling process here is giving you a 14-point bump.

kindof scary when one-timers says generally a passing score is 128 raw... wtf

[DwightSchruteFarms]

Isn't the scaling necessarily going to be lower on the practice test because all the questions count, where in the real thing only 190 of 200 do?

This. It's not that the scaling is lower, but that to get an idea of your expected raw MBE score you should multiply by 1.9, not 2. 190 X 68% = 129, so the scaling process here is giving you a 14-point bump.

kindof scary when one-timers says generally a passing score is 128 raw... wtf

Isn't passing supposed to be 127-128 raw? Or is that too low?

[c3pO4]

Isn't the scaling necessarily going to be lower on the practice test because all the questions count, where in the real thing only 190 of 200 do?

This. It's not that the scaling is lower, but that to get an idea of your expected raw MBE score you should multiply by 1.9, not 2. 190 X 68% = 129, so the scaling process here is giving you a 14-point bump.

kindof scary when one-timers says generally a passing score is 128 raw... wtf

Isn't passing supposed to be 127-128 raw? Or is that too low?

right - but NCBE says 129 raw is above average. so how can passing be 127-128. does that mean if you are not AT average, you failed the MBE?

[kaiser]

Took NCBE #2 today. Certainly was consistent. Got 77/100, after getting 80/100 on NCBE 1. 77/100 was 159 scaled, whereas yesterday's was 163, so no real difference.

I found Test 2 to be a bit harder. Less easy Q's, where I could just pre-phrase the answer in my head, and then just pick it out fast. Was torn more often on this test. Although evidence is one of my strongest subjects, I find real MBE evidence to be a bit harder. They hit it from a slightly different angle than BarBri does at times, and I guess that is throwing me off a bit. Also a bit odd was that I didn't do too great in crim (matched evidence in max errors), and crim is another of my best subjects. Con law was once again very easy, and seems to be far and away the easiest subject within the real MBE Q's.

In scoring it, I got freaked out when I saw 9 wrong out of first 25. But it really settled out toward the end, as it did yesterday. I'm really happy I took these tests, since its helped boost my confidence a bit.

Whoever said multiply your raw by 1.9 seems to be right, in looking at some conversion charts. Your raw score x 1.9 is the total raw that is converted up via the scaling.

[anonymcoffee]

I have the Emmanuel MBE book are the NCBE questions the same or should I pay for those as well? If they're the same qs, should I purchase them just for the NCBE explanations (aka are the explanations different from the book)?

I wouldn't rely too much on the difficulty of these released ones I read that NCBE keeps the harder/trickier questions to reuse and does not release them (I found the released too easy to warrant the actual results for past exams)

[bgdddymtty]

right - but NCBE says 129 raw is above average. so how can passing be 127-128. does that mean if you are not AT average, you failed the MBE?

I think this all comes down to the 190 vs. 200 question. To be on track to pass (around 135 scaled in most jurisdictions), you need ~120/190, which is ~127-128/200. When NCBE says that 129 is above average, they're talking about 129 questions that count, or ~135-136/200.

[kaiser]

I have the Emmanuel MBE book are the NCBE questions the same or should I pay for those as well? If they're the same qs, should I purchase them just for the NCBE explanations (aka are the explanations different from the book)?

I wouldn't rely too much on the difficulty of these released ones I read that NCBE keeps the harder/trickier questions to reuse and does not release them (I found the released too easy to warrant the actual results for past exams)

These NCBE tests are not simply random released Q's. These are made to be representative of the real thing, which NCBE explicitly states. And the whole "they save the trickier ones" wouldn't make any sense anyway. Look at threads where people discuss their BarBri performance vs. their real MBE performance, and I would say its totally in line with the variance you tend to see.

[c3pO4]

Took NCBE #2 today. Certainly was consistent. Got 77/100, after getting 80/100 on NCBE 1. 77/100 was 159 scaled, whereas yesterday's was 163, so no real difference.

I found Test 2 to be a bit harder. Less easy Q's, where I could just pre-phrase the answer in my head, and then just pick it out fast. Was torn more often on this test. Although evidence is one of my strongest subjects, I find real MBE evidence to be a bit harder. They hit it from a slightly different angle than BarBri does at times, and I guess that is throwing me off a bit. Also a bit odd was that I didn't do too great in crim (matched evidence in max errors), and crim is another of my best subjects. Con law was once again very easy, and seems to be far and away the easiest subject within the real MBE Q's.

In scoring it, I got freaked out when I saw 9 wrong out of first 25. But it really settled out toward the end, as it did yesterday. I'm really happy I took these tests, since its helped boost my confidence a bit.

Whoever said multiply your raw by 1.9 seems to be right, in looking at some conversion charts. Your raw score x 1.9 is the total raw that is converted up via the scaling.

*bows down*

[anonymcoffee]

I see, I just found them too easy compared to barbri and I doubt I became smarter in 3 days haha. I want to say maybe only a handful had an exception within an exception trick to it. But what you said makes sense.


So anyone know how the questions/explanations compare to the Emmanuel book? Same thing or different?

[rnf1292]

Kind of too much of a coward to buy the NCBE bc if I do poorly my confidence will be shot lol can't deal right now

[kaiser]

Kind of too much of a coward to buy the NCBE bc if I do poorly my confidence will be shot lol can't deal right now

However you are doing on BarBri, you will do better on the NCBE one. I can pretty much guarantee that. I'd def buy one for the confidence boost. When you see how short most of the (non-property) Q's are, it will really give you a lift. I'd say its the smartest thing I've done so far in my bar prep. Not because its imperative to have seen real MBE Q's, but because I was on the verge of a mental breakdown since I suck at essays, and needed to know that I will likely get some wiggle room from the MBE.

And now that I finished those 2 NCBE tests, I can dedicate the next 4 days to essays and MPT. Had I not taken those tests, I would have dedicated a disproportionate amount of time in the next few days to MBE that could be better spent on other things.

[kaiser]

Oddly enough, there was a straight up wills question in the NCBE 2 test. Was a question about whether a will gift lapses or not if the beneficiary predeceases testator. Didn't expect to see that in there.

[jawsthegreat]

How to print the NCBE test:

If you click "view feedback" at the very beginning of the test it will pull up all 100 questions, but none of them will have the answers yet because you haven't answered them. Simply print this and you'll have all 100 questions.

Much easier to read.

[Matteliszt]

Took NCBE #2 today. Certainly was consistent. Got 77/100, after getting 80/100 on NCBE 1. 77/100 was 159 scaled, whereas yesterday's was 163, so no real difference.

I found Test 2 to be a bit harder. Less easy Q's, where I could just pre-phrase the answer in my head, and then just pick it out fast. Was torn more often on this test. Although evidence is one of my strongest subjects, I find real MBE evidence to be a bit harder. They hit it from a slightly different angle than BarBri does at times, and I guess that is throwing me off a bit. Also a bit odd was that I didn't do too great in crim (matched evidence in max errors), and crim is another of my best subjects. Con law was once again very easy, and seems to be far and away the easiest subject within the real MBE Q's.

In scoring it, I got freaked out when I saw 9 wrong out of first 25. But it really settled out toward the end, as it did yesterday. I'm really happy I took these tests, since its helped boost my confidence a bit.

Whoever said multiply your raw by 1.9 seems to be right, in looking at some conversion charts. Your raw score x 1.9 is the total raw that is converted up via the scaling.

Almost exactly the same scores as me. I scored a 158 and a 160. I took the third one and had done a bunch of the questions before (in Strategies and Tactics) and so I scored a 181. Are the SFE, Half day/full day exams in the MPQ2 book worth doing or are they just weird exceptions to the exceptions questions?

[kaiser]

^^^

I almost don't even wanna do the simulated full day, or any of the other big MPQ2 tests, since its only gonna frustrate me. Plus, I feel like the NCBE tests helped confirm that my effort is better spent on essays, insetad of spending 3 hour chunks with MBE anymore.

Oh, and could you imagine getting a 181 on the real thing? You could literally write "fuck you" on the essays, and pass.

[blong4133]

Took NCBE #2 today. Certainly was consistent. Got 77/100, after getting 80/100 on NCBE 1. 77/100 was 159 scaled, whereas yesterday's was 163, so no real difference.

I found Test 2 to be a bit harder. Less easy Q's, where I could just pre-phrase the answer in my head, and then just pick it out fast. Was torn more often on this test. Although evidence is one of my strongest subjects, I find real MBE evidence to be a bit harder. They hit it from a slightly different angle than BarBri does at times, and I guess that is throwing me off a bit. Also a bit odd was that I didn't do too great in crim (matched evidence in max errors), and crim is another of my best subjects. Con law was once again very easy, and seems to be far and away the easiest subject within the real MBE Q's.

In scoring it, I got freaked out when I saw 9 wrong out of first 25. But it really settled out toward the end, as it did yesterday. I'm really happy I took these tests, since its helped boost my confidence a bit.

Whoever said multiply your raw by 1.9 seems to be right, in looking at some conversion charts. Your raw score x 1.9 is the total raw that is converted up via the scaling.

Almost exactly the same scores as me. I scored a 158 and a 160. I took the third one and had done a bunch of the questions before (in Strategies and Tactics) and so I scored a 181. Are the SFE, Half day/full day exams in the MPQ2 book worth doing or are they just weird exceptions to the exceptions questions?

SFE I didn't think was too bad. The other's are complete crap shoots if you ask me. If you're feeling good after doing the NCBE tests, I wouldn't risk having your confidence decimated by those stupid half-day/full day exams.

I'm debating on whether to go ahead and buy one of the NCBE tests to do on saturday after I've had a chance to run through all the essay stuff. I've got a kaplan book with a full day exam in it I may run through if I decide not to blow 50 bucks on one of the tests. But I'm definitely not touching the second half of the full day exam. The first 100 pretty much caused a meltdown for me.

[Matteliszt]

^^^

I almost don't even wanna do the simulated full day, or any of the other big MPQ2 tests, since its only gonna frustrate me. Plus, I feel like the NCBE tests helped confirm that my effort is better spent on essays, insetad of spending 3 hour chunks with MBE anymore.

Oh, and could you imagine getting a 181 on the real thing? You could literally write "fuck you" on the essays, and pass.

I did the full exam from February 2013 today, did 50 NYMC from Barbri and threw in a random MPT. The NYMC are nice for learning randomly little distinctions, but at this point I kind of don't want to learn anymore distinctions for fear of confusing myself on the MBE. the essays from Feb were all fairly straightforward or straight up asked you what they wanted you to discuss.