Was the MBE harder than you expected Forum

[Canada99]

I left the MBE day thinking that I had done poorly and might have failed the bar, because I was relying on a high MBE to balance out low essay scores. Just like everyone else, the MBE felt very hard to me. I ended up with a scaled MBE in the mid-160s, so you can't really rely on how it felt while you were taking it.

Basically the same here. I was really pushing for high essay scores, given the uncertainty with the MBE. As many have said above, it wasn't that the MBE was "hard"; rather, the questions seemed different (I used Themis and a bit of Adaptibar). The questions seemed to have a different "voice" or tone, if that makes sense. I left the exam thinking I did ok, but also with no idea exactly how I had done.

Anyways, I got a 160.2, so it all worked out in the end. Just glad it's over.

[northwood]

I thought it was difficult, and in the end I scored worse than on my PT tests, but did enough to pass, so I obviously did good enough.

Perhaps people thought the MBE was more difficult because of the essay upload issue? Getting no sleep while trying to upload your essays, plus the anxiety of the whole debacle, in addition to the mental drain of two days of testing, with a bunch o neurotic test takers may have negatively impacted people's performance? OR it could also be like the LSAT where its not unusual for people to score lower than their PT average?

Maybe, Maybe not

[cjb524]

OK, I made a promise with the universe that if I passed the Bar I would post here to give future takers some peace of mind, so here goes.

I passed NY with an MBE of 170.1. Although that's a good score, I was not expecting it at all. In fact, like many others, I walked out of the MBE feeling like I bombed it. The MBE was like nothing I had seen before in BarBri practice tests - it seemed as if, for the most part, the questions were testing on weird nuances that were barely touched on in prep. If I had to estimate, I would say I was sure on maybe 40 questions, narrowed down my selection to two answers for maybe 90, struggled to decide among three answers on another 30, and was bewildered by the remainder. What did I do for those questions? I applied first principles and reasoned from the facts where my knowledge of the law was lacking. I wasn't sure about any of them.

This has been said a million times before, but I think it bears repeating: the way you feel coming out of the MBE is almost never an accurate reflection of how you did. Almost immediately after the exam, I started freaking out and made a list of all the MBE questions I could remember (about 90), and then checked my answers against my notes and other sources. I immediately came to the conclusion that I had gotten about 15 questions wrong, no question. For many of those that I got wrong, I never stood a chance, because they were testing on footnote-type material. But even for the others, I couldn't be certain that I got them right, because the questions were so multi-layered, and the answer choices so cryptically worded, that I thought I might have gotten those wrong too, despite knowing the law. The fact that I went into the MBE on about 2 hours' sleep didn't help either. Nor did the fact that my job was dependent on passing.

This website gave me a lot of peace of mind while waiting for results, but what irked me were the many posters saying something along the lines of "The MBE was easy, you babies". No, it wasn't. It was objectively difficult, and I say that as someone who passed with room to spare.

In sum, you're probably going to feel like absolute shit for months until results are released, but that's perfectly normal and not a reliable indicator of whether you passed. I wish you all the best, and congrats to those who passed this thing.