Official Kaplan July 2017 Bar Thread Forum

[Nonconsecutive]

This dude in the Family Law video is awesome.

Finally got to him, and yeah, this is great. Didn't envision I'd be getting lectured on having 10,000 babies and marrying grandma.

[Asroma]

Finally done with lectures! The conflict one was awful. I did not retain anything from it.

[soonerfreak]

I hope you all are having better luck with your Wills/Trust professor because mine SUCKS! #UGH

Damn, sorry you couldn't have Guzman. I feel really confident in Wills/Trust after those lectures. As for secured transactions, I just hope the way it has alternated with corps stays the course. That topic just seems like a waste of time to full memorize for one essay with all the rules.

[Pass302]

I hope you all are having better luck with your Wills/Trust professor because mine SUCKS! #UGH

Damn, sorry you couldn't have Guzman. I feel really confident in Wills/Trust after those lectures. As for secured transactions, I just hope the way it has alternated with corps stays the course. That topic just seems like a waste of time to full memorize for one essay with all the rules.

No, my professor went too fast in explaining things (Not speed, but just no emphasis on anything) and then she would just speak and forget to change the slides EVERYTIME. Like we were all there like "So, you are going fast and not even letting us see the slides." Then when she would realize to change it, she would just leave it for three seconds before moving on. Funny thing is that she is a Dean of a law school for academic success.

[Pass302]

Finally done with lectures! The conflict one was awful. I did not retain anything from it.

Same! I finished with Family Law though. Now just to fill in the time between now and the bar. I wonder if they will give us suggestions on what to do. When I took Barbri for the other bar exam I took in July, we got like a tentative schedule for the remaining days.

[TheoO]

Kind of feel bad about not taking the next practice tomorrow, but I feel like I need to nail down some concepts more before I go for it.

[Yugihoe]

Kind of feel bad about not taking the next practice tomorrow, but I feel like I need to nail down some concepts more before I go for it.

I'm planning on taking it by Saturday or Sunday. I don't want to delay too much because I want to see what they do in terms of giving us feedback / a personalized schedule of what to study. It sucks because I haven't even reviewed the midterm yet.

[TheoO]

Kind of feel bad about not taking the next practice tomorrow, but I feel like I need to nail down some concepts more before I go for it.

I'm planning on taking it by Saturday or Sunday. I don't want to delay too much because I want to see what they do in terms of giving us feedback / a personalized schedule of what to study. It sucks because I haven't even reviewed the midterm yet.

Yea, I'm reviewing the midterm now. It's really a pain to go through.

[tacocohcevoli]

Finally done with lectures! The conflict one was awful. I did not retain anything from it.

Same; the lecture was dull as shit and I couldn't keep up with filling in the blanks. I ultimately just gave up trying.

I don't want to spend my whole weekend taking a practice test, so I think I'll just do the simulated final tomorrow. I haven't done a single writing assignment so far so tomorrow should be fun.

[FLgrad2TN]

As for secured transactions, I just hope the way it has alternated with corps stays the course. That topic just seems like a waste of time to full memorize for one essay with all the rules.

So is there a pattern of Secured Transactions alternating with Corps? And are we due for Corps or SecTrans?

[Nonconsecutive]

Wow, I'm finding myself really struggling to engage, which is odd because it's normally the inverse - the closer a test gets the more I freak out and over prepare. But this time around I'm just low on steam. For whatever reason injecting a bunch of essays (in place of lectures) has actually made me feel less confident. Ah well, still a decent chunk of days left to keep at it.

[Yugihoe]

I have like 1400 questions left in the qbank, so that comes out to doing 100 per day until test day if I want to exhaust them all. Been doing 33 in the am, in the afternoon, and then at night. Let's get it.

Reviewing the midterm now, and fuck, it's so tedious...taking 1.5 hours at 2x speed just go to over 50 questions.

Hoping to take the MBE final by Sunday and then spend all of next week doing all the essays I skipped (which is pretty much all of them since I've done 0 writing)

[nybar2017]

Hey all I've enjoyed following along for the past month.

I just wrote the MEE/MPT midterm for NY bar. Wow that was tough! I feel like I am fine for the MBE, but the essays are another issue. Does anyone know whether past essay topics are known to repeat themselves? I thought the essays were supposed to be more general questions, but then you get hit with whether stock dividends v cash dividends are principal or income in a trust; and what is the test for whether a conditional permit constitutes a taking. None of our lectures covered those topics.

[BulletTooth]

Hey all I've enjoyed following along for the past month.

I just wrote the MEE/MPT midterm for NY bar. Wow that was tough! I feel like I am fine for the MBE, but the essays are another issue. Does anyone know whether past essay topics are known to repeat themselves? I thought the essays were supposed to be more general questions, but then you get hit with whether stock dividends v cash dividends are principal or income in a trust; and what is the test for whether a conditional permit constitutes a taking. None of our lectures covered those topics.

I doubt that there is much, if any, repetition of topics on the MPT based on the scope of the possible subject matter. For the essays, however, there are definitely common "scenarios" that will be tested. You should start to get a feel for the common fact patterns after going through a few of the essays. Of course, there will be some variation but there's only so many ways that the essays can test you on a certain subject area. For instance, homocide questions have an almost formulaic breakdown (murder, 1st degree, 2d degree, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, self-defense, insanity).

[Yugihoe]

How are people scoring on the mixed sets of 33 qbank questions? I seem to keep getting between 58% and 76% no matter how much studying I'm doing.

[TheoO]

How are people scoring on the mixed sets of 33 qbank questions? I seem to keep getting between 58% and 76% no matter how much studying I'm doing.

About the same. Depending on how late in the day I do them. I verge between 65-75%.

[Asroma]

How are people scoring on the mixed sets of 33 qbank questions? I seem to keep getting between 58% and 76% no matter how much studying I'm doing.

Same. I think depends on the fact that they are not evenly distributed.

[jdk]

How are people scoring on the mixed sets of 33 qbank questions? I seem to keep getting between 58% and 76% no matter how much studying I'm doing.

I never broke 80%, and most were in the 65% range. Very frustrating...but overall the questions are good at reinforcing highly testable areas. I was well prepared for the MBE.

[Yugihoe]

How are people scoring on the mixed sets of 33 qbank questions? I seem to keep getting between 58% and 76% no matter how much studying I'm doing.

I never broke 80%, and most were in the 65% range. Very frustrating...but overall the questions are good at reinforcing highly testable areas. I was well prepared for the MBE.

That's reassuring. I'm thinking just slogging through all the Kaplan MBE questions should be sufficient to feeling pretty good about the MBE. It's just the MEE I'm worried about right now.

[jdk]

That's reassuring. I'm thinking just slogging through all the Kaplan MBE questions should be sufficient to feeling pretty good about the MBE. It's just the MEE I'm worried about right now.

I was not in a UBE jurisdiction, but if I were my strategy at this point would be to focus on subjects that pay double - contracts, property, evidence, etc. For subjects that are only tested on the MEE (family law, biz orgs, etc), I would just concentrate on memorizing the most heavily tested areas. Best interest of the child? check. Business judgement rule? check. move on. More points to be had elsewhere.

[Nonconsecutive]

For those of you who have submitted MPT(s) for grading, has it taken forever? I've had an MPT sitting for 9 days, and that's if you exclude Monday & Tuesday of this week.

Essays have been way faster, at least for me.

[soonerfreak]

For those of you who have submitted MPT(s) for grading, has it taken forever? I've had an MPT sitting for 9 days, and that's if you exclude Monday & Tuesday of this week.

Essays have been way faster, at least for me.

I think they are just behind right now, might be why they push self-assessment so hard.

So after doing the full test I am feeling kind of good. Bumped my raw score on the MBE from 118 to 129. My MPTs weren't crazy well organized but I hit on every major point I needed to and applied the law correctly. MEEs need work but that is mainly learning the law and nothing was like "omg I can't learn this." How is everyone else feeling after the full practice test?

[nybar2017]

So after doing the full test I am feeling kind of good. Bumped my raw score on the MBE from 118 to 129. My MPTs weren't crazy well organized but I hit on every major point I needed to and applied the law correctly. MEEs need work but that is mainly learning the law and nothing was like "omg I can't learn this." How is everyone else feeling after the full practice test?

That's really great improvement! Like I said before I found the essays quite difficult but you're right we have time to learn the law. I went from 142 to 148, so I'm in a good spot, but was hoping to see more improvement. Chris says over the next two days we are going to improve 30 marks so I'm looking forward to that lol

[Yugihoe]

That's really great improvement! Like I said before I found the essays quite difficult but you're right we have time to learn the law. I went from 142 to 148, so I'm in a good spot, but was hoping to see more improvement. Chris says over the next two days we are going to improve 30 marks so I'm looking forward to that lol

Woah that's really good. You're going to crush the MBE!

Also lol @ Chris's comment

[soonerfreak]

When are we supposed to get our final study plan after doing the final test?