Bar exam hangout thread for people who will probably fail.

[KaleidoscopeDream]

anyone else struggling with extreme pangs of anxiety thinking about the day the scores are released? i honestly feel like i have a mini panic attack thinking about what i'm going to say to friends and family about failing and getting over the embarrassment of it all. i didn't finish mpt, feel v mixed on mee and honestly was between two answer choices for 75% of the mbe questions.

i don't know how i'm going to find the energy to study for this again.

ive never seen a post capture exactly how I feel like this. idk how to snap myself out of it. I sometimes even think whether I should just start studying now....

[leib10]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like I failed. My Barbri midterm score was really low, and with Texas's cut score of 135 it feels impossible to get the 675 needed. Plus I screwed up several of the essays. It seems very likely that I failed, and waiting sucks the big one.

[Estecontre]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like I failed. My Barbri midterm score was really low, and with Texas's cut score of 135 it feels impossible to get the 675 needed. Plus I screwed up several of the essays. It seems very likely that I failed, and waiting sucks the big one.

That cut score for the MBE doesn't really exist. One of the best things about the Texas style of grading is that you can do bad in a section and still be carried over by the other sections.

[L_William_W]

I took the exam in a UBE jurisdiction. I'm scared shit of the MPT- I didn't finish the second one. I IRACed the shit out of the MPT's- I hope that was enough.

Out of the six essays, I feel confident in two of them. There were two that I had mixed feelings about. And there were two that I just data dumped and bullshitted my answer. I'm a little concerned about the MBE. The funny thing is that I actually finished early- maybe the questions were shorter than in previous exams. I made sure to double check my answers. There were easy subjects (Torts, Con Law), moderately difficult (Crim, Property, Contracts), difficult (Evidence), and cruel and unusual punishment (Civ Pro).

In about 6 weeks, the results will be released. I'm having nightmares and I'm obsessing over the exam 24/7.

[Sprout]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like I failed. My Barbri midterm score was really low, and with Texas's cut score of 135 it feels impossible to get the 675 needed. Plus I screwed up several of the essays. It seems very likely that I failed, and waiting sucks the big one.

I thought a wills essay was a property essay. go me and fuck the rule against perpetuities

checking in

[Estecontre]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like I failed. My Barbri midterm score was really low, and with Texas's cut score of 135 it feels impossible to get the 675 needed. Plus I screwed up several of the essays. It seems very likely that I failed, and waiting sucks the big one.

I thought a wills essay was a property essay. go me and fuck the rule against perpetuities

checking in

If you don't mind me asking...how was this possible? Assuming you took Texas this past time around, the essays were pretty identifiable.

On a side note, messing up one essay is not lethal. I think for the most part, a lot of people will mess up at least one essay if not two. I wrote a long post about this before.

[leib10]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like I failed. My Barbri midterm score was really low, and with Texas's cut score of 135 it feels impossible to get the 675 needed. Plus I screwed up several of the essays. It seems very likely that I failed, and waiting sucks the big one.

I thought a wills essay was a property essay. go me and fuck the rule against perpetuities

checking in

If you don't mind me asking...how was this possible? Assuming you took Texas this past time around, the essays were pretty identifiable.

On a side note, messing up one essay is not lethal. I think for the most part, a lot of people will mess up at least one essay if not two. I wrote a long post about this before.

I knew what the essays were, but I came to the wrong conclusion on multiple subquestions on multiple essays. I was able to identify the issue for every one (except commercial paper), and I made the best arguments I could on all of the essays, but the conclusions for a lot of the essay subquestions were wrong.

[Sprout]

I took new york not texas and I was running out of time and thrown off by the rule against perpetuities... since I didnt have much time I just assumed it was a real property question without a lot of reflection

Not my best moment

[dans1006]

I walked out of the exam feeling like I failed. I've been given hope by the fact that most people feel that way and still most of them pass. I'm dying right now with about two weeks to go. I really hope the results come out early. Good news or bad news, I just need to know.

[KaleidoscopeDream]

I walked out of the exam feeling like I failed. I've been given hope by the fact that most people feel that way and still most of them pass. I'm dying right now with about two weeks to go. I really hope the results come out early. Good news or bad news, I just need to know.

My heart skips a beat each time I get an email and it says the state bar in the subject... They even emailed us yesterday about taking a survey and it was the worst

[Slytherpuff]

Don't count yourselves out yet - remember that people have passed while leaving an essay entirely blank. Everyone walks out feeling like they probably failed.

[blaze1306]

I walked out of the exam feeling like I failed. I've been given hope by the fact that most people feel that way and still most of them pass. I'm dying right now with about two weeks to go. I really hope the results come out early. Good news or bad news, I just need to know.

My heart skips a beat each time I get an email and it says the state bar in the subject... They even emailed us yesterday about taking a survey and it was the worst

I know right!!! We got an email yesterday for a State Bar Openhouse...really right when results are suppose to come out!!

[dans1006]

I walked out of the exam feeling like I failed. I've been given hope by the fact that most people feel that way and still most of them pass. I'm dying right now with about two weeks to go. I really hope the results come out early. Good news or bad news, I just need to know.

My heart skips a beat each time I get an email and it says the state bar in the subject... They even emailed us yesterday about taking a survey and it was the worst

I know right!!! We got an email yesterday for a State Bar Openhouse...really right when results are suppose to come out!!

That's just wrong. I think that's borderline Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. Not cool.

[blaze1306]

New Mexico is out and I failed for the third time...I think I'm done

[LockBox]

New Mexico is out and I failed for the third time...I think I'm done

Hey Blaze, really sorry to hear this. While deciding not to take the bar again is a personal choice, I hope you make it when your mind is clear and you're not reeling from just failing the bar. While it might seem dire now, if you believe it could all be erased if you eventually pass then you owe it to yourself to try again. If not, then I wish you the best of luck.

[KaleidoscopeDream]

New Mexico is out and I failed for the third time...I think I'm done

Hey Blaze, really sorry to hear this. While deciding not to take the bar again is a personal choice, I hope you make it when your mind is clear and you're not reeling from just failing the bar. While it might seem dire now, if you believe it could all be erased if you eventually pass then you owe it to yourself to try again. If not, then I wish you the best of luck.

Ditto. Don't beat yourself up over it. All you can do is try your best and hope things work out. Even Justice Cardozo took 5 times before he passed the bar exam on his sixth try. That alone proves that it's never impossible to pass nor is it any indicator of how good of a lawyer you are/can be.

[hockeyman969]

Take it in another jurisdiction, New Mexico appears to be hard graders, there are plenty of other UBE jurisdictions that may be gentler graders and give you a greater chance of success. Each state grades MPT and MEE and subjectivity is definitely present.

There's a reason why the pass rate went up in say NY after the switch. If you goto a state with a higher pass score then 260 may very well be obtainable.

[Jmart082]

Take it in another jurisdiction, New Mexico appears to be hard graders, there are plenty of other UBE jurisdictions that may be gentler graders and give you a greater chance of success. Each state grades MPT and MEE and subjectivity is definitely present.

There's a reason why the pass rate went up in say NY after the switch. If you goto a state with a higher pass score then 260 may very well be obtainable.

This is good advice. While I tried to do this myself, I ended up failing due to my reliance on old Barbri materials and a complete unwillingness to pay thousands of dollars for a course. Thankfully, I'm in the middle of getting another degree, so no harm done.

[dans1006]

I have a feeling that I came up short on the MBE.

I was doing very well in BARBRI. Would do okay on most subject sets, almost always above the specified target. Mixed subjects were even stronger somehow. Simulated MBE went really well, as did refresher sets.

Then came the real thing. FIrst half was fine. Felt as though I did better than the ~65% BARBRI tells you to shoot for. The second half? Yikes. Not sure what happened. Several questions that I had no idea what I was doing. I made educated guesses and then...some just straight up guesses. Moreover, the thing that left me so down was that I knew I made some pretty bad mistakes. Straight up moronic errors on easy questions that I knew I messed up the moment I closed the book. I'm one of those people that if I go back and review my work, I will talk myself into wrong answers. I know of about 6-8 that I got wrong from reviewing a reddit thread immediately thereafter.

The possibility is the essays can bring me through is there, but I'm not holding out hope. I think I did well on almost all of them, scoring at least a 'passing' score if not doing better than average on several. MPT? Not so sure. Still, there were no essays where I was left scratching my head. I may have included some extra "maybe toss this in, too...." material a time or two, but I knew how to tackle most of the questions and even spotted things my friends missed.

Regardless, I don't expect good news. I walked out feeling the same way I felt after I took the LSAT the first time...which I bombed before retaking and achieving a 13 point swing. Up until a few days ago, I was absolutely miserable. I've kind of moved on mentally, prepping myself for the wait until April for better news.

I feel very similar about my performance especially re a handful of layup MBE questions I most certainly got wrong but shouldn't have missed.

Hopefully this doesn't break it for us and we both come out the other side having passed.

If it helps at all - I would have described my experience very similarly except both sections of the MBE felt like toss ups. I missed one MBE question that was basically Civ Pro 101. I really feared that was a sign that I was making similar mistakes all over the MBE. Coincidentally, I also did poorly on the LSAT then brought up my score by 12 points. I passed NC and did well enough on the MBE to waive into DC (NC only tells you if you can waive into other states, but never tells you the actual score). If anything, I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it. If you have the essay subjects down, then taking a second time will be significantly easier assuming the worst-case scenario comes true.

Ahh thank you for this post!

Anyone who was sure they failed but passed?

[RoccoPan]

Anyone who was sure they failed but passed?

I felt this way when I took my first bar exam several years ago. I was 100% convinced I bombed the MBE and failed (to the point that I almost gave up and didn't finish the exam), but I passed. I feel the same way this time around. I guess the MBE just has that effect on me. Knowing this doesn't make the wait any easier, though.

[hockeyman969]

I took new york not texas and I was running out of time and thrown off by the rule against perpetuities... since I didnt have much time I just assumed it was a real property question without a lot of reflection

Not my best moment

Note well it could have been a hybrid dual topic essay. They started multiple issue MEE exams last year with Crim Pro/Evidence. I only analyzed the evidence and not the crim pro component thinking MEE was only single topic on the essays.

[hockeyman969]

Don't count yourselves out yet - remember that people have passed while leaving an essay entirely blank. Everyone walks out feeling like they probably failed.

If you were outside the Tampa Convention Center after the morning session...oh yeah that's how most people felt including students from Harvard.

[crumb cake]

MBE mean is over 141, up from last year.

[hockeyman969]

MBE mean is over 141, up from last year.

Yup, my score increased from last year to this year. If I go to a score transfer bar jurisdiction...I am taking my higher autopass score from this year.

[crumb cake]

MBE mean is over 141, up from last year.

Yup, my score increased from last year to this year. If I go to a score transfer bar jurisdiction...I am taking my higher autopass score from this year.

Can you see your MBE somewhere before the state releases results?