July 2015 MBE Scores/Results Forum

[pieddepoule]

Passed the NY Bar.

MBE: 149

My bar preparation was a complete mess.
Took Barbri and completed about 29% of the course.
I was naïve (or stupid) enough to fool myself into thinking the last 2-3 weeks of July will be sufficient for bar prep and it was by far the most miserable couple weeks of my life.
I hadn't even finished watching the lecture videos, so I was watching 2-3 lectures a day at 2x the speed during the day and trying to actually study the material at night.
Didn't (or more like couldn't) do a single essay practice question and maybe did around a total of 200-300 MBE practice questions (was hitting around 55-70% the last week before the bar, but the sample was so small that I couldn't really tell where I was).

I walked out the bar exam feeling 100% certain I failed.
Don't know what happened, but I am just so grateful.

Congrats to everyone who passed the bar and best of luck to those of you who will be taking the February bar.

[starryski]

NY Passed

135.5 MBE

Didn't do the Barbri midterm but did pretty much all of the practice questions, usually in 20 questions chunks, near the end was getting consistently in the 60-65% range on most of the worksheets. Failed February w/ 124 MBE so decent improvement, focused mainly on the MBE practice questions this time around studying.

what did you use to improve your score? just barbri? i got a 124.5 and failed with a 660. just a few more MBE questions right and i would have passed.

[missedthempre]

150.8

Passed the NY bar. Had the string of Ds.

Finished 47% of Themis, usually got 55%-65% on the practice MPQs, and never did a full practice test or full MPQ test. Honestly have no idea how I managed to get over 150; felt terrible about the test at the time.

[TLSaul2001]

NY Passed

135.5 MBE

Didn't do the Barbri midterm but did pretty much all of the practice questions, usually in 20 questions chunks, near the end was getting consistently in the 60-65% range on most of the worksheets. Failed February w/ 124 MBE so decent improvement, focused mainly on the MBE practice questions this time around studying.

what did you use to improve your score? just barbri? i got a 124.5 and failed with a 660. just a few more MBE questions right and i would have passed.

Yeah I just did every Barbri practice question that I could along w/ some MBE supplements. I didn't waste time rewatching my lectures or doing much essay work, I just did practice questions all day and made my study materials from them (I had all the outlines filled out from my first time through the Barbri lectures)

[starryski]

NY Passed

135.5 MBE

Didn't do the Barbri midterm but did pretty much all of the practice questions, usually in 20 questions chunks, near the end was getting consistently in the 60-65% range on most of the worksheets. Failed February w/ 124 MBE so decent improvement, focused mainly on the MBE practice questions this time around studying.

what did you use to improve your score? just barbri? i got a 124.5 and failed with a 660. just a few more MBE questions right and i would have passed.

Yeah I just did every Barbri practice question that I could along w/ some MBE supplements. I didn't waste time rewatching my lectures or doing much essay work, I just did practice questions all day and made my study materials from them (I had all the outlines filled out from my first time through the Barbri lectures)

i plan on skipping lectures as well. i did pieper and the resultant outline was great but writing it took too much time. i would rather reread them, memorize all the mnemonics like i did the first time (this helped tremendously with my essays). just repurchased adaptibar. i completed about 800 of the questions but will try to complete a lot more this time. i did about 1200-1400 practice mbes over the course of the summer, read why i got questions wrong, made short outlines, but i started doing this late in the summer. will start doing that in the beginning. i want to focus on the MBE a lot more now, but still maintain my essay scores. the admin essay really fucked me up. i could have passed even with my 124.5 MBE, had I gotten at least a 40 on that essay.

[cocoabean250]

I passed in New York (yay!!). I used Barbri, and I remember getting like an 88-89 on the midterm and being devastated. I made detailed outlines to memorize and go through, and did a crap ton of essay and MBE questions. I was so happy that I'd taken a peek the night before essay day at Admin and felt okay about essays and the MPT, obviously I guessed on the NYMC. I felt like I'd been hit by a bus for the MBE AM portion (was in complete shock), but honestly was so happy to be halfway done that I just went into what I thought was an easier PM session already happy about it ending.

My few pieces of advice:

- Watch lectures with a high speed of just skip them all together, as having outlines is really enough
- Do a ton of MBE questions, and for the ones you get wrong, read the explanations and write out notes on it. Do this for questions you get right but
guessed on as well.
- Take days off. I worked all day and went to the gym on weekdays from 9-5 or 6 then stopped and chilled. I worked a bit on weekends too, but stopped earlier. Don't work yourself ragged.
- Take solace in your support systems. I wouldn't have been able to get through this without my friends, family, boyfriend, and his family.
- Remember that it's just a test, and the worst thing that can happen is that you have to take it again. Yes, I know it sucks, but if you really want this, get up, try again, and do your goddamn best.

[hookem12]

Passed NY with a scaled MBE score of 133.9.
Kaplan mid-term score: 115.

I felt awful about the MBE. I abhor multiple choice. However, I had the essay formula down pat (I found Kaplan to be helpful for that). Hoping my low MBE score doesn't bar NJ passage...

[Besdkepdsecret]

Passed NY 155.6 MBE

- Themis roughly 93%
- 134 midterm
- b/wn 70-80% on MC qs in final weeks
- string of D's in AM
- felt AM worse than PM
- took me longer on actually test day than in practice to complete questions

[law2015]

Passed NY. Scored 119 on Themis midterm and a 151.7 on the actual MBE. Completed 23 percent of Themis.

[cowgirl_bebop]

Passed NY. 148.4 MBE. Took Kaplan and completed MAYBEEEEEEEE half of the course, but that is probably too generous. Watched all of the video lessons (at regular speed) and filled in the bar notes. Completed about 3 sample MBEs but don't quite remember the results of the last one (I think around something in the 120s). Never actually did a full essay or MPT, and completed about 400 MC questions max. Don't know how but somehow it was enough to pass.

My advice: don't do what I did. I have always been terrible at keeping up with online courses, and this proved to be no different. I would have preferred the structure of an in-person class, but distance from the nearest class site plus a midsummer interstate move made that impossible. Kaplan's lessons were pretty good IMO, and I'd recommend it to others. However, if their system doesn't suit your study type, tweak what you need to tweak and go from there. I know that strict memorization is not really something I can do, so I focused on methods that didn't require that.

Also, if you easily get psyched out, AVOID TALKING ABOUT THE TEST WITH OTHER PEOPLE STUDYING. If you worry about how little (or much) you are doing compared to others, how your practice scores are coming out, or how comfortable others may seem compared to you, you are going to mess yourself up.

[SemperLegal]

165+ in NY. Did 70-80% of Barbri, but at double speed in the background while I cooked/cleaned and downloaded the audio for the Texan instructors and triple speeded it (I talk really, really fast so a drawl is impossible for me to focus on.) and just did bullet points for essays.

I totally relied on the MBE and figured, worse comes to worse, I'll just assume N.Y. Follows the MPC/modern approach for the essays. So, I fid the practice MBE questions over and over on my phone/tablet until I knew most of the questions by sight, and (more importantly) knew what tricks they used. Almost all the real MBE questions were rephrasing of one of the wrong BarBri answers, expect for like ten to fifteen very memorable curve balls.

There is a lot that isn't covered in the lectures, and I wasn't reading the long outline, but everything testable is on the sample MBE, either as a right answer, or explained in a wrong answer.

[orangecup]

162.5 MBE in NY. Passed.

Did something like 2000+ MBE questions in the Kaplan Qbank, along with the midterm and final. I think my raw %s were something like 65% for the midterm and 78% for the final.

[lspa2015]

The spreadsheet and the differential are interesting, but I'm not sure that the differential from the midterm is the most compelling information. A lot would depend on how people approached the midterm. The midterm was often taken in late June and if you hadn't really studied much by that point, I don't think it is at all indicative on ultimate performance. In contrast, I would think the final (or in BarBri's case the refresher and the mixed sets) are a much better indication of how someone was doing in prep vs the actual exam. In any event, I've seen many scores where people exceeded their final by considerable amounts (and it doesn't look like there has been much of the opposite), which should be encouraging for those still waiting.

One thing that is a bit confusing to me is that if you go to Separac and plug in the July 2015 multistate, the higher it is the lower the scale. In fact, when you get to higher numbers like a 160, there is barely no scale at all. I would think that the minimum scale would need to be at least 10 points just to equalize it, i.e., if someone got every question right and got a 190 raw, on a scaled basis they should get a 200. Anyway, I don't understand why scale decreases so much. Any thoughts?

[Cscottrun9]

Passed NY with a 148 MBE. I took Pieper. If you are struggling with the essay portion, I highly suggest at least looking into his class. He gives you more information than any of the other prep programs, and its not even close. I wrote far more than the people around me who told me they took Barbri. For example, Barbri did not teach that de minimis encroachments rarely count towards adverse possession (at least that is what I was told). Easy extra points for me. He gives some pretty solid predictions (he hit on several) at the end of the class as well.

As for the MBE portion, I HATED Pieper's practice question. So much so that I actually went out and purchased the practice question books from other prep programs. Also was not a fan of Pieper's outlines, but realistically, he gives you so much in class that you barely ever have to look at them. I scored 118-122s on his mock exams. The curve put me at 148 on the real test, so I suppose my hate for his questions may be undeserved. Seems like a pretty good predictor.

[deadnotsleeping]

Silly question, but obviously Bar exam grading makes literally no sense ...

I passed in NH. It's a UBE state. They weigh the MBE 50% of the total score. So therefore, half my total score should be what I received on the MBE? They don't give you the breakdown and I am curious. Thanks!

[ilovetheatre]

Silly question, but obviously Bar exam grading makes literally no sense ...

I passed in NH. It's a UBE state. They weigh the MBE 50% of the total score. So therefore, half my total score should be what I received on the MBE? They don't give you the breakdown and I am curious. Thanks!

Close, but no. The UBE is 50% MBE, 30% MEE, and 20% MPT. NH requires applicants to score 276 of the maximum 400 points possible. You can get 175 points on the MBE and the remaining 101 points from a combination of the MEE and MPT. Alternatively, you could bomb the MBE with a scaled score of 100 and pass with high MEE and MPT scores.

[robinhoodOO]

The spreadsheet and the differential are interesting, but I'm not sure that the differential from the midterm is the most compelling information. A lot would depend on how people approached the midterm. The midterm was often taken in late June and if you hadn't really studied much by that point, I don't think it is at all indicative on ultimate performance. In contrast, I would think the final (or in BarBri's case the refresher and the mixed sets) are a much better indication of how someone was doing in prep vs the actual exam. In any event, I've seen many scores where people exceeded their final by considerable amounts (and it doesn't look like there has been much of the opposite), which should be encouraging for those still waiting.

One thing that is a bit confusing to me is that if you go to Separac and plug in the July 2015 multistate, the higher it is the lower the scale. In fact, when you get to higher numbers like a 160, there is barely no scale at all. I would think that the minimum scale would need to be at least 10 points just to equalize it, i.e., if someone got every question right and got a 190 raw, on a scaled basis they should get a 200. Anyway, I don't understand why scale decreases so much. Any thoughts?

The problem with using the refresher is many people didn't take it. That, and it's only 100 questions as opposed to 200 Q's that many other courses offer as part of their final. For those that did take the Refresher, I tried to use the refresher to calculate the differential (I noticed on a couple of them that I didn't do this--this has been corrected, but barely budged the average differential). I merely used the correct score out of 100 as a percentage to figure out what they would have received had they taken 200 Q's to calculate the differential. And, where people took another course and had a final, I used the Final (which usually consisted of 200 Q's).

I can't speak to the scaling.

[robinhoodOO]

Update (132 Reporting): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

Lots of good news from New York TLSers! Congrats!

[jfier]

NY Bar; scaled MBE score of 158.2. Took Barbri and completed like 99% of the suggested work, and also did a lot of stuff on my own --- didn't review the handouts so much as I did the CMR and more detailed outlines, and practice essays not assigned but included in the course materials. Just wanna say though that I only felt confident about a few of the MBE questions, and like I was taking shots in the dark with the rest. Guess my knowledge came through even if I felt like I couldn't apply it? haha

[abergavenny]

Just passed NY with 141.4. Waiting for NJ result.
1. First try way back in 2011. Used BARBRI at that time. Failed with 137.9. Worked in a non legal field for 3.5 years.
2. This July. Studied while working with old Barbri conviser book and MPQ1 for a few months, then did Themis. Completed Themis program about 70%. (For 6 months, 2-3 hours weekdays & 5-8 hours weekends.)

On the three day exam days (NY+NJ), I didn't think I needed more time but was not sure how I did. As to essays, there was nothing that I was clueless. I spotted at least a few issues and stated correct black letter rules each question. In the end, I was like...not sure about mbe but I did everything I could for essays and other parts. This summer I resumed a non-legal work as I genuinely thought I failed.

[Ohiobumpkin]

Passed OH Bar. Won't know scores for a few days and will update when available. Here is what my study schedule was like.


- Did Themis
- 4-5 hours the first three weeks
- 6-8 the next few weeks
- last two weeks 10+ hours a day
- I only did three graded essays
- did about 50% of the MBE practice questions
- watched all the lectures and filled out the outlines on normal speed
- never completed a whole MPT, but I did read instructions and prompt and outlined answers to 4-5 practice MPTs
- completed upwards of 70% of the practice essays and read the model answers to any that I didn't do (OH is a 63% state essays+MPT, and 33% MBE)
- Made flash cards for the most dense subjects or trouble spots (contracts+UCC, property, crim law/procedure)
- Read the outlines for only the distinctions.

As for my thoughts on the MBE, I thought the morning session was harder than the afternoon, and I also had the infamous string of Ds in the morning (probably about 7-9 in one instance). I also thought the practice MBE questions were significantly different from the real MBE questions, but the law they tested were mostly covered by my Themis program. In general I would say I felt so-so about the OH Bar in general, and felt the MBE was the hardest part.

As for the MPT, I felt reasonably confident in my essays because the required writing was something I had done many times for work.

[cmc_jd]

Passed in Ohio. I won't know my scores for a couple days (they're in the mail) but I had a 126 Barbri Midterm grade

[Ahyis]

Passed NY.

MBE: 150

Took Themis, my midterm score was 117/200.

I actually completed 100% of the Themis course (because I'm OCD and possibly an idiot), staying on directed study the whole time, and going ahead when I felt I hadn't done enough work in a day. I averaged about 6 hours a day of study, beginning to end. I did not ramp up in the last few weeks, but stayed consistent in hours studied. At the end I was averaging about 70%+ on all mixed MBE sets.

[charlesxavier]

Got my results from Ohio. 165.9 MBE. I scored a 132 on the Barbri simulated MBE and a 67/100 on the refresher (I think). I also did the emanuel practice MBE and scored a 158.

Edit: FWIW, I don't remember a string of Ds. I remember that D was a common answer choice but I had nowhere near 9 (or whatever) in a row--maybe 4. Hearing about this infamous string made me nervous. So, if you're still waiting, and don't remember it, don't worry.

[anxious89]

Passed SC!! Will post MBE results when I get them. I knew I failed, thought the second half was the hardest thing I've ever done, and didn't remember any string of Ds. Thanks to all the posters for helping to ease my nerves during this process!