First ever post, but wanted to offer some words of encouragement to retakers, provide my own experience, and express my appreciation to everyone (especially a male human) on this forum.
I took the February 2017 exam and ended up with a 1250 total scaled score (1217 written and 1311 MBE), but managed to pass on my second attempt this past February. (1250 is around the 10th percentile btw)
For whatever it's worth, here's how I changed my preparation/strategies from February 2017 to February 2018:
MBE:
-I began my bar review around the first week of January by doing an in-depth review of all the MBE subjects one-by-one. I would read through the Barbri Conviser Mini Review (sometimes underlining/highlighting) and the lecture video handout I had completed/annotated the previous year. (Regarding Barbri lecture videos: I really felt like not having to spend so much time watching them this go around allowed me to spend much more time on studying/memorizing (I really struggle with rote memorization)/practice...on the other hand, the videos are useful because the lecturers tell you which topics are tested often and which aren't, and have some useful hypos. Still, I definitely spent way too much time on them last year.)
-I purchased Adaptibar (the only money I spent on bar review this year) and did a total of about 700 questions (I did not do any of Barbri's questions). I would review a subject, do 50 questions of that subject, and move on to the next subject. Once I had gotten to 350, I started doing like 25 random questions per day until the exam. My cumulative average never went over 60%. For awhile I was typing out rule statements for questions I got wrong, as well as rule statements in the answer explanations...I'm not sure this ended up being worth anything, because I never had time to review what I had typed out. I do think taking a lot of time to review and understand the answer explanations, as well as all the rules contained in them, was very worthwhile.
-About 3 weeks out from the exam date, I re-reviewed all seven MBE topics (spending like a day on each) as I studied the California-only topics. I felt like doing this was really helpful because last year, I think I had gotten rusty on the MBE topics by the end of bar review. The Barbri class schedule does all the MBE topics at the beginning and then all the California-only topics...I do think it's good to start with the MBE topics, but I definitely can say it helped a lot to re-review them closer to test day, especially because the MBE seems to be testing more and more "exceptions to exceptions" and whatnot.
-Test Day: Speaking of "exceptions to exceptions," I agree with many on this forum that the MBE, particularly on Civ Pro, seemed to test many nitpicky rules/issues...I requested a score advisory from NCBE and found out I scored above 150 this time, so I definitely ended up doing much better than the 1311 I scored last year, even with doing only 700 Adaptibar questions.
What I did differently on test day this year was really implement "process of elimination" as a strategy; this is sort of backwards compared to how Barbri instructs you to go about it, as they advocate you trying to recall the correct answer before looking at the answer choices...I discovered Barbri's strategy doesn't really work well for me, first because I'm relatively bad at recalling exact rules purely from memory, and second, because it seems like on most questions, the rule they are testing is pretty conspicuously revealed in the answer choices. So if you're someone who struggles with memorization like me (i never even memorized a single outline in law school), perhaps try letting the answer choices guide you instead of the "call of the question," keeping in mind of course that some of the answer choices are designed specifically to trick you. When stuck on deciding between two answer choices (this happened often), I would usually go with the one that seemed less intuitive, figuring the other one was a "trap". I also really focused on keeping my emotions completely disconnected from the substance of the questions (this probably sounds stupid, but I do think sometimes the facts are specifically designed to fuck with us by appealing to our ethical intuition; so often the right answer seems to completely shaft criminal defendants, allocate damages/property between parties counterintuitively, or shield the government and other unsympathetic defendants from liability).
Essays:
So let's assume I got like a 1510 this time on the MBE (could've been higher); that means I would've had to score at least a 1370 on essays to pass...that's like 420 raw essay points, so an average of 60 per essay.
First off, I totally bombed the PT (and bombed both of them last year too); the most I could have scored on it would be a 50, because I only wrote like 500 words total on it and my answer to the second question in the prompt was only one conclusory sentence. I know this was a really risky and foolish to do, but then again, I am a really slow reader, so I doubt I could've done that much better on the PT no matter what, and I didn't have time to practice PTs when I was still trying to cram in reviewing all the CA subjects and re-review the MBE subjects.
For essays, I do think "predicting" the topics that are most likely (AND LEAST LIKELY) is worth doing. For example, I didn't waste any time studying/writing tort, community property, or federal civil procedure essays. I also expected a constitutional law question, and figured it would more likely be First Amendment or Intergovernmental Immunities than other topics that had more recently been tested.
I only had time to do a few practice essays (fewer than 10)...what helped most for the essays was conforming my responses to the format used in this essay:
http://www.makethisyourlasttime.com/wp- ... rop_85.pdf (scored an 85).
I set off analysis paragraphs with "
Here, ___", ended analysis paragraphs with a sentence beginning with "
Thus _____.", and ended the discussion of each main issue with a standalone conclusion "paragraph" that was usually one sentence long and always went, "
Therefore, ____.". I also set off rule statements as individual paragraphs, unless two rules were so related that they were better left together. Basically, I really tried to put myself in the shoes of the grader and make it blatantly obvious where everything was located structurally.
I wrote multiple incorrect rule statements (for example, I forgot two elements of the Lemon test, so I made up a couple elements and used them instead), and except for wills, didn't feel particularly confident about any of my essays, which ranged from 800 words to 1300 words in length.
___
Anyway, that's all to say that it is definitely possible to make huge improvements on this exam and pass...I was in a very dark place for the whole past year since failing...it had a negative impact on my then-job, my self-esteem, you name it. But I also hope I can encourage repeaters that you don't necessarily have to change too much in order to pass...sometimes, a natural weakness is just that and there is not much use pouring a ton of time and effort into trying to force it to work for you (for me, this was the PT); other times, it is worth it to invest time in improving performance in specific areas. Use your results as a guide, and trust yourself. There is no "right way" or "wrong way" to prepare for this exam, but you can figure out "better ways" that work for you as an individual...so don't feel like you need to do like thousands of MBE questions or write out 100 essays just because you've heard or read other people are doing that.
Also, on a personal note, it's definitely possible to burn out on bar prep. I had a total mini-meltdown about five weeks in this year and basically lost a total of like 10 days of solid prep time around the end of January and beginning of February; then on top of that I ended up catching the flu around February 10. At that point, I had to just start laughing at myself and the absurdity of this entire process (because it really is absurd). I wrote out an "emergency" studying calendar for the remaining days I had left, figuring I was all but guaranteed to fail, but decided I might as well just give it my best shot and sprint (read: cram) to the proverbial finish line. All in all, I think I spent a total of seven weeks preparing, vis-à-vis over 10 weeks last year. Honestly, 6-7 weeks is probably about all I can sanely tolerate of studying the mass of mind-numbing and mostly useless material tested on the bar exam (plus, at least personally, there's an upper bound on retention anyway).
tl;dr: Ultimately, figuring out what works for you is what's integral to your success (of course, dumb luck matters a lot as well given the subjectivity of the essay grading...that's why it's probably worthwhile to devote time to the MBE). If I could change up a handful of study strategies and go from 1250 to passing, so can you. Be flexible, be forgiving of yourself, and don't take it too seriously (remind yourself that this exam is really just a thinly veiled barrier-to-entry and failing it really indicates nothing about your ability to practice law). You can do it; this utterly ludicrous test is beatable.
Thanks again, everyone!