MBE - how'd you feel? Forum

[victortsoi]

What I felt pissed about was that it seemed like I had prepared for a completely different exam. Massive amount of hours and measuring my progress, for what? Sheeshk. I'll feel lucky if I even get 50% right.

Funny thing is I've spoken with 3 Adaptibar people who have said they felt like they saw most of those Q's and they did great. How fucked is it if it all turns down to which course you do your MBE's with???

So, we all spend dozens and dozens of hours studying for fuck all for it to turn on which course you did...haha.

Those Adaptibar people are stupid. I did 900 questions on Adaptibar with 74.5% accuracy. In still thought today's exam was crazy hard. Not so much because of the law it tested, but because many off the questions seemed to be logic puzzles more than law questions, and most of them had more than one answer that seemed right

I wouldn't say that this was an easy mbe. It was hard and they were all 50/50s. Im just as pissed as everyone else, but I felt that between barbri and adaptibar, the adaptibar ones "felt" more similar to this exam, albeit different. Barbri had some good rules for civ pro that came in handy.

[zozin]

I just don't get it. How can someone take that many practice tests/questions and then not see more than 2-3 questions that look similar to PREVIOUS exam questions? Just doesn't make sense, and if they're going to alter the exam question style that much, they should at least make sure they aren't worded ambiguously.

I didn't take a prep course, but from what I've read, the prep questions are nothing like MBE questions. They have long fact patterns and test on the fringe issues in law. The MBE questions are written in such a way that you can clearly tell what the right answer should be, but the answer choices are so meticulously ambiguous, that you second guess yourself... A lot. Compared to the released MBE questions from NCBEX, I didn't think today's MBE was all that different. You either know the rule or not, if you kind of know it, you're fucked because the other three answer choices will look mighty attractive.

[somuchbooty]

I just don't get it. How can someone take that many practice tests/questions and then not see more than 2-3 questions that look similar to PREVIOUS exam questions? Just doesn't make sense, and if they're going to alter the exam question style that much, they should at least make sure they aren't worded ambiguously.

I didn't take a prep course, but from what I've read, the prep questions are nothing like MBE questions. They have long fact patterns and test on the fringe issues in law. The MBE questions are written in such a way that you can clearly tell what the right answer should be, but the answer choices are so meticulously ambiguous, that you second guess yourself... A lot. Compared to the released MBE questions from NCBEX, I didn't think today's MBE was all that different. You either know the rule or not, if you kind of know it, you're fucked because the other three answer choices will look mighty attractive.

I'm probably focusing on a few where an honest dispute over a grammatical interpretation in the sentence changed the correct answer, but IDK I feel like a lot of prep questions were old test questions, right? At least, that's what adaptibar claimed I thought. As someone else mentioned, they're trying to change a little too much I think.

[BrokenMouse]

In 1L we learned about the case that gave us the but-for-test when two merged fires are caused by two defendants. I got this wrong. You know why? Because I changed my answer. You know why I changed my answer? Because I forgot the rule and bar examiners were rule enough to write something else in that also vaguely made sense.

It was my fault. I suck. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[Elston Gunn]

In 1L we learned about the case that gave us the but-for-test when two merged fires are caused by two defendants. I got this wrong. You know why? Because I changed my answer. You know why I changed my answer? Because I forgot the rule and bar examiners were rule enough to write something else in that also vaguely made sense.

It was my fault. I suck. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

It's just one question. Everything will be okay. There there.

[Confused7]

Lol. Just plain lol.

[Underoath]

In 1L we learned about the case that gave us the but-for-test when two merged fires are caused by two defendants. I got this wrong. You know why? Because I changed my answer. You know why I changed my answer? Because I forgot the rule and bar examiners were rule enough to write something else in that also vaguely made sense.

It was my fault. I suck. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

whats the rule because I wanna make sure I got it right

[Elston Gunn]

In 1L we learned about the case that gave us the but-for-test when two merged fires are caused by two defendants. I got this wrong. You know why? Because I changed my answer. You know why I changed my answer? Because I forgot the rule and bar examiners were rule enough to write something else in that also vaguely made sense.

It was my fault. I suck. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

whats the rule because I wanna make sure I got it right

when two things each could have caused it on their own but neither was the but-for cause because the other existed, both of them are liable (I think)

[somuchbooty]

lol yeah i thought that was one of the easier ones but after googling it, now I'm doubting myself. Probably proving the point it is useless to think about them at all.

[zozin]

I'm probably focusing on a few where an honest dispute over a grammatical interpretation in the sentence changed the correct answer, but IDK I feel like a lot of prep questions were old test questions, right? At least, that's what adaptibar claimed I thought. As someone else mentioned, they're trying to change a little too much I think.

I think the fact patterns contained a little more extraneous information to throw people off and/or merged topics to make people think it was an X question, when it was really a Y question.

Adaptibar's question bank has ~581 questions from MBEs administered between 1971–1991, February 1991, July 1991, July 1998, the four OPTs, and the 30 free practice questions. So a 1/3 of their questions are 25 years or older. The more recent questions are pretty similar to what I saw today. With the exception of some tougher questions, the OPTs were pretty damn similar.

[BrokenMouse]

I think if you get all 65s on the essays and get 105 on the MBE you will likely pass.

[Alcibiades]

Glad to hear everyone thought this test was weird. So many D answers and Earnest Money.

To paraphrase Radioactive Man: "My Score! The MBE Prep does nothing!"

[ars2345]

Yeah. I would say Adaptibar's questions were "more" like the real MBE, compared to the 20 or so Kaplan MBE qs i did. That's because they are NCBE questions- as others have noted. That said, I felt that the old questions on adaptibar, by the end, tested my ability to identify the legal rule and then look for the closest fit answer- and i could actually find an answer that matched what I hypothesized a correct answer would look like. In the week before the bar exam, I took the 4 100-question OPE exams available on Adaptibar. I got in the 80-90s% on each one. I was feeling BALLER walking in this AM, and when I walked out for lunch, I felt like I got my ass totally kicked. In a lot of fact patterns, I would figure out what I thought should apply, and then not find any answer remotely close to it.

God bless the curve.......I agree with whoever said that NCBE is trying to reverse the trend of MBE score creep, which Seperac discusses a lot on his website. Scores have been increasing over time on the MBE, and it looks as if they are trying to mitigate that. At our expense! Yikes! Good luck everyone and thank you all for the consolation. Have a glass of wine and try to forget about this til late october!

[5ky]

crossposting this from another thread and i don't want to sound like a broken record, but it's important. i posted this yesterday:

don't forget: in all likelihood you will be raging when you come back tomorrow about how the MBE questions were trickier than barbri's and how shitty a jerb they did. this results from:

1. nerves
2. you only remember the hard ones, and not the easy ones
3. you cannot immediately grade like you are used to, so you've never had to deal with this before

just keep that in mind.

this ALWAYS happens. when i took the bar in 2013, our post-bar thread was just like this, pages and pages of utter shock and disbelief that the MBE was so different than the practice questions and so much harder. everyone ended up passing and doing quite well. i did better than i did on most of the barbri questions (about in line with their mixed sets at the end).

PLUS, don't forget that there are 10 experimental questions. those account for a lot of the worry, i think. they aren't vetted and many are probably shitty questions that will get tweaked or not used.

the odds are incredibly against you having collapsed from where you were practicing. it just feels awful in the aftermath, but come results time, you'll be pleasantly surprised. keep your heads up!

[Underoath]

In 1L we learned about the case that gave us the but-for-test when two merged fires are caused by two defendants. I got this wrong. You know why? Because I changed my answer. You know why I changed my answer? Because I forgot the rule and bar examiners were rule enough to write something else in that also vaguely made sense.

It was my fault. I suck. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

whats the rule because I wanna make sure I got it right

when two things each could have caused it on their own but neither was the but-for cause because the other existed, both of them are liable (I think)

That's what I put....

[ars2345]

OMG YES SO MANY D ANSWERS. I was freaking out about this during the exam so I'm glad someone posted that <3 <3

[SpeshulSnoflake]

OMG YES SO MANY D ANSWERS. I was freaking out about this during the exam so I'm glad someone posted that <3 <3

Ditto

[HLBE689]

same regarding lotsa Bs and Ds - i was like ok four or five Ds in a row thats weird - should I change my answer. Dafaq was that exam.

[Underoath]

same regarding lotsa Bs and Ds - i was like ok four or five Ds in a row thats weird - should I change my answer. Dafaq was that exam.

FUCK YES!!! I HAD A LOT OF Bs AND Ds!!!!

I got worried too and said...forget it just gonna leave it

[HLBE689]

kinda relieved to see that I wasn't the only one with that pattern

[tianziwansui]

i felt like the questions were more like adaptibar than barbri. i hated barbri's questions. it seemed like they had a few longer type questions than i had seen in previously released ones...but i don't know if my style helped me feel less overwhelmed. i definitely took 10 minutes to divide all the questions into the subject areas. felt a lot more manageable that way.

[Underoath]

kinda relieved to see that I wasn't the only one with that pattern

or we both picked the wrong answer (4 times in a row) out of the 2 we were guessing on...haha um not funny

[Elston Gunn]

I definitely had more than 25% Bs but it was nothing compared to the SCOURGE of Ds INVADING my scantron.

[Lobolaw1984]

I had like 5 or 6 D in a row too. Mine were in the last colum though.

[somuchbooty]

I had 33% D's at least. So I'm glad at least there's enough people confirming that.