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I'm going through the Barbri course, currently doing the MBE topics. They break the MBE practice questions into sets.

The problem I'm having is that I do ok on the first set, a little worse on the second, a little worse on the third, a little worse on the fourth, and by the fifth I'm doing so badly that I'm convinced I'm going to fail the bar.

The instructions for Barbri said something like "don't move on to the later sets if you do ok on the first one". Well, fine, but I wanted to get some practice, which is why I kept going.

Does anyone know if Barbri sorts the questions by difficulty, with the most difficult in later sets? How do these sets compare to the real MBE tests? Is the first set more representative of what I'll see overall, or is the fifth?

Also, how long do we get to answer the 200 questions? Three hours, six hours, eight hours?

The sets increase in difficulty. You're supposed to get less and less right. You don't need to know all the questions to pass the bar.

Much appreciated. It seems like a backwards way to arrange them -- I took the Powerscore LSAT prep class, and they used the harder LSATs early in the course so that when we scored well later (on the easier ones), it built up confidence.

I cannot recall how long we were given to answer the questions, but relative to the difficulty of the questions, it was ample time to do a decent job. I was always told that Barbri gives us the hardest of their past questions in these practice sets, and my experience with the actual Bar Exam confirmed this.

Several of my peers and I got together after the exam and confirmed a mutual experience: that the actual questions were much easier than the practice sets had led us to believe. We estimated that only 10% of the questions were so difficult that we had no idea how to answer, and only about 10% forced us to guess between two seemingly correct answers... the rest seemed fairly easy.

Definitely do not take my words as a reason to study less... for all I know, we did so well only because we studied as if the test was going to be insanely hard.

Many, many thanks.

No fear on studying less, the problem I've been having is that I am so panicked and stressed that I can't focus well enough to remember anything.

Actual MBE questions are harder than anything BarBri gives you... but you should still be able to do well on the actual test if you have prepared according to BarBri. The actual MBE has a decent amount of easy MBEs, and a decent amount that are pretty challenging, but not completely off base to the course. I think I remember maybe 5 questions (out of 200) that I seriously had no idea what they were talking about.


If I recall correctly, if you score about a 130 out of 200, that should give you a pretty solid MBE score to work off of because they end up curving the score. So, as you can see, you can miss 70 questions and still do well.

While everyone is different, what works for me on MC is to practice by covering the question with an index card and reading the answers first. Usually you can cross out one or two that are incorrect statements of law and it also gives you what facts to look for in the question. Then I read the question and quickly highlight the pertinent facts. Usually by the time you are finished reading the question you already know the correct answer. Good luck on the bar.

It seems that everyone had a different experience regarding the relative difficulty level between the practice and actual questions. I guess that makes sense, the test will be somewhat different between every year compared.

One bit of optimism though: Even if the the test you take is insanely difficult, it will be equally difficult for a majority of your peers. All you have to do is stay above the bottom of the curve (whatever your state failure rate is); many under that percentage will be the "no shows" or "freak outs", and they are quite easy to beat. Just study and stay calm knowing these little facts, and you should do fine.