NY July 2015 Support Group Forum

[goaheadualright]

what is a dwelling?

[Danger Zone]

what is a dwelling?

Go home you're drunk

[sd5289]

what is a dwelling?

Go home you're drunk

This legit made me

[summeisruined]

Do you guys have any idea how to predict a score? I can't wait until october... . There is separac but i don't get how to go from raw score to scaled...

Like, do I still have a chance to pass even though I completely failed the fifth essay and a couple of other issues on the other essays? I'd like to know how people who passed thought after this exam..

[Ludacrispat26]

Let's say you got 50th percentile on MBE+MPT

What percentile do you need on NY as a whole to pass?

[TLSaul2001]

Do you guys have any idea how to predict a score? I can't wait until october... . There is separac but i don't get how to go from raw score to scaled...

Like, do I still have a chance to pass even though I completely failed the fifth essay and a couple of other issues on the other essays? I'd like to know how people who passed thought after this exam..

I'm pretty sure it's impossible until you know the scale. I failed February by 20ish points and my essay scores were: 56/48/39/45/52 (60 MPT) and had a scaled MBE score of 127. (Not 100% sure on all score but that's ballpark) I sent my stuff to the seperac guy and he said that meant I got a raw score on the MBE of 102 and was in the bottom 25% of all test takers, that's basically what failed me. The essay I got the 39 on was a complete fail because I had 12 minutes to write it and didn't know anything about the topic. So I think even essays where you really bomb them, if you wrote something you should get at least 30 points out of them. On my other essays where I basically got 'average' scores (50 is average) I 100% missed issues and didn't feel good about them really, but still did fine. The key is writing something so they can at least give you some points, a blank = 0 which means you're done for.

If I had averaged 5 more points on cumulative essay score (I had a 49ish avg I think and needed a 55) I could have passed w/ my asstastic MBE score. In reverse, had I gotten a scaled MBE score of 139 (So 10ish more questions right I think?), I would have passed w/ my essay scores. To put it in perspective, if a 665 was a 100% score on the bar, I got a 95%.

All that being said, no point in killing yourself trying to figure it out because you have NO clue what your MBE score is going to be and I really think that's the most important factor in determining if you passed.

Let's say you got 50th percentile on MBE+MPT

What percentile do you need on NY as a whole to pass?

Pretty certain you would pass unless you left an essay blank or completely missed issues on every essay. Believe me, my essays that I got average scores on last time were not good at all, I thought I did awful on the essays and ended up right around the 'average' score on them. (As a whole, doing above average on the MPT also helped my cause in that respect)

[summeisruined]

TLSaul2001 :

Thanks for your very detailed answer that makes me feel better.

And you are right, there is nothing we can do anymore.

Thanks a lot and I wish you good luck for october

[nyny]

I am also a repeater, and a few people that have failed actually looked at our scores and discussed the issues we missed and discovered patterns. First things first, for whatever reason the July bar scores weighs more than the Feb bar scores. For example a 48 scaled essay in July is weighted more to the needed 665 passing score, than a 48 scaled essay in February. We noticed that if you totally bombed an essay, meaning you did not know any of the issues, but IRAC'ed (Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion) something you will score around a 39. If you correctly IRAC one out of the 4 or 3 main issues (I say main issues because within some main issues are sub issues, ex. question 1 may have an "a" and a "b" in that case both would have to be correctly IRAC'ed) on an essay you will score around a 44.

If you correctly IRAC 2 out of the 3 or 4 issues then you will be around 48. If you completely kill an essay and get everything right you would score a 55 or above... usually capped at 59. I know the scores are out of 10, but its difficult to get over a 59... I totally killed the crim pro essay in February and got a 59, in fact my essay hit just about everything the sample essay hit on the ny board website. It takes a miracle to get a 6 or above... You also have to take into consideration that some people have accommodations to where they stretch out the entire bar exam for 4 days, each half we take during the normal bar exam, they take for an entire day. So their essays will be longer give or take and mess up the scale. In fact today is their first MBE day.

In Feb I failed by 12 points and off the top of my head my essay scores were, 54, 44, 59, 48, 56, and I ran out of time on the MPT and scored a 29. My MBE was a 136.8, I scored half of the NY MC correct... I still have nightmares about that MPT. I did not follow the format (which is so key), and did not write enough. You truly need the entire 90 minutes to correctly format and write the MPT or you will miss something... Thankfully I took my own advice this time and finished everything on time. All in all with those same scores, I may have barely passed the July 2014 bar exam, because as I said the scores are scaled less Feb.

Last thing in regards to the MBE, everyone should trust how they were scoring leading up to the MBE. Whatever you were scoring should only either increase or decrease by a few points. So if you scored a 138 scaled score on a mock MBE, expect anywhere from like 133-143 give or take. I just hope all of us scored high enough on the MBE to take the power out of the graders hands, because they are failing more and more people as time goes on.

[xlawschoolhopefulx]

Anyone know how we return barbri books? Do we have to pay for shipping or is there a printing label somewhere that I'm missing? I feel like shipping 38 lbs of books is going to be very expensive.

[SemperLegal]

Anyone know how we return barbri books? Do we have to pay for shipping or is there a printing label somewhere that I'm missing? I feel like shipping 38 lbs of books is going to be very expensive.

Go to USPS and ask for media mail. Its like 18 dollars

[epsteinson]

.

[AReasonableMan]

Is it really so hard to break a sixty? I completely bombed one of the essays, and was sixty five percentish on barbri mc q's. I was banking on an eighty or two. I'd guess some of my essays were eight pages of mostly analyzing facts - there's a non-official ceiling on these?

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

Anyone know how we return barbri books? Do we have to pay for shipping or is there a printing label somewhere that I'm missing? I feel like shipping 38 lbs of books is going to be very expensive.

Go to USPS and ask for media mail. Its like 18 dollars

Can anyone tell me the dimensions of the box for Barbri books? I need to buy a new one.

[SemperLegal]

I kept the ones they used, sorry

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

Do we get an email from Barbri with how to return books? (Address,when to send, etc)

[junaman]

You can return in person to the Barbri office at 1500 Broadway.

[epsteinson]

Do we get an email from Barbri with how to return books? (Address,when to send, etc)

If you sign into your Barbri account, click the "i" at the top-right, then scroll/control+f to the link that says "Summer 2015 Book Return Form." It has all the info you're asking about.

[lspa2015]

Here's something I'm trying to understand. In NY, you need a 133 scaled score to "pass" the MBE (133/200 = 66.5%), which means you need about a 118 raw score, or about 62% correct out of the 190 graded. Barbri's "goals" were as follows:

Refresher - 57/100 = 57%
Mixed set 1 - 31/100 = 62%
Mixed set 2 - 33/100 = 66%
Mixed set 3 - 33/100 = 66%
Mixed set 4 - 34/100 = 68%

They say that goal is based on the average performance of previous students so I'm assuming "goal" meant the average score. Does anyone know if this is correct, i.e., has anyone looked at the Barbri percentile rank for the target scores to see whether they are around 50%?

Anyway, if goal does mean the average score (50th percentile), it looks like the average person didn't have a lot of room for error just to pass. Is Barbri that confident that the average person will do better on the real MBE than on their practice tests? It sure doesn't seem as though the average person feels they did better. The reason I'm concerned is I'm looking at it from the view of a person who got just around target on all those mixed sets (almost always either a point below or a point above) and just a tiny bit above target on the refresher. I'm feeling okay on the essays, just worried about the MBE (and let's not even talk about the NYMC!).

[sd5289]

How does the essay grading work? My essay grader seemed to be grading out of 100 points, but I'm see 5's and 7's being thrown around in reference to the NY essay grading on here. Is it a scale of 1-10 or a scale of 3-7? I've seen the 3-7 scale a lot on here too.

[nyny]

How does the essay grading work? My essay grader seemed to be grading out of 100 points, but I'm see 5's and 7's being thrown around in reference to the NY essay grading on here. Is it a scale of 1-10 or a scale of 3-7? I've seen the 3-7 scale a lot on here too.

They bar exam essays and mpt are graded from 0-100. The score you end up seeing, if you fail the bar exam (you only see your essay scores if you do not pass), is the scaled individual essay scores. So a scaled score of a 47.6 could have been a 45.6 raw score depending on the scaling for that particular essay. Barbri grades their essays and mpt from 0-10. Basically a 3 equals a 30 and so on so forth.

[Ash8]

I hate you Rose!!!

[ovxsny27]

Is it possible to miss 1-2 sub-issues on an essay and still get a 50+? Crazy how I went from thinking the MBE would be my bread & butter to hoping that my essays were strong enough to save me :/

[nyny]

Is it possible to miss 1-2 sub-issues on an essay and still get a 50+? Crazy how I went from thinking the MBE would be my bread & butter to hoping that my essays were strong enough to save me :/

Google "ny bar exam essay grading" and click on the first link on the page, which should take you to another forum... Then you will see a poster named "associatex" discussing the answer to what you're looking for in 2012. He supposedly was/is a grader for barbri... No one really knows exactly how the NYBOE grades their exams and reaches the scores they do... but some can infer when looking at their scores, remembering what they wrote or did not write, and compare to the model answers.

[phildunphy]

I have space for either Evidence or Wills & Estates for the fall. Which will be more useful when studying for the NY Bar? As in, which subject will be more of a pain in the ass to learn in 2 months? Or is there another course entirely I should consider that will be more useful than both? Thanks!

[Danger Zone]

I have space for either Evidence or Wills & Estates for the fall. Which will be more useful when studying for the NY Bar? As in, which subject will be more of a pain in the ass to learn in 2 months? Or is there another course entirely I should consider that will be more useful than both? Thanks!

Take evidence