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Do you feel like Barbri adequately prepared you for the MBE (July 2014)?

I completed 52% of the barbri assignments and there were ~10 I didn't know (or could eliminate only one) and ~20 where I narrowed it down to two answers. If I got every one of those 30 wrong, plus an additional 10 wrong, I'm still riding pretty at ~80% correct. Take barbri if you can afford it.

Between Barbri, Kaplan (hybrid course), Critical Pass, and the Emanuel MBE book, I felt prepared for the MBE. I doubt Barbri alone would've left me feeling overly confident about the MBE's.

It would have been nice to have a few more of the more one off questions but Barbri did prepare me for the majority of the questions. In retrospect I should have done the critical pass and some kaplan mbe questions because after a while the Barbri ones were just beating a dead horse.

I don't think you can say whether Barbri adequately prepared you for the July 14 bar exam until you get your results.

It depends. I felt prepared for the majority of the questions because we covered those subjects. But with some of the questions (Crim Pro and Con mostly) that were basically carbon copies of Supreme Court cases, there wasn't much preparation shy of knowing those actual cases that would have helped with those questions. So I can't really blame Barbri for that.

portaprokoss wrote:I completed 52% of the barbri assignments and there were ~10 I didn't know (or could eliminate only one) and ~20 where I narrowed it down to two answers. If I got every one of those 30 wrong, plus an additional 10 wrong, I'm still riding pretty at ~80% correct. Take barbri if you can afford it.

lol holy shit

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The first essay question was totally out of left field, Barbri had only minimally skimmed the topic and I hadn’t taken any classes to help me satisfactorily answer the question. If this had been the third or fourth question it wouldn’t have been so upsetting but to come out of the gate with WTF....it certainly was traumatizing.

But yes, Barbri adequately prepared me for most of the exam. If anyone ever says not to worry about the footnotes, wish them well for when they retake the exam.

Sandro wrote:It would have been nice to have a few more of the more one off questions but Barbri did prepare me for the majority of the questions. In retrospect I should have done the critical pass and some kaplan mbe questions because after a while the Barbri ones were just beating a dead horse.

From what I could tell, Critical Pass was little more than the Barbri handouts distilled into flash card form.

portaprokoss wrote:I completed 52% of the barbri assignments and there were ~10 I didn't know (or could eliminate only one) and ~20 where I narrowed it down to two answers. If I got every one of those 30 wrong, plus an additional 10 wrong, I'm still riding pretty at ~80% correct. Take barbri if you can afford it.

lol bro...

portaprokoss wrote:I completed 52% of the barbri assignments and there were ~10 I didn't know (or could eliminate only one) and ~20 where I narrowed it down to two answers. If I got every one of those 30 wrong, plus an additional 10 wrong, I'm still riding pretty at ~80% correct. Take barbri if you can afford it.

lol.


I did about 1,200 practice questions (nearly all Barbri assignments and some questions from the Emanuel book), and overall, I didn't feel the Barbri questions were representative enough. The real questions were overall more difficult than the Barbri questions even though the fact patterns were shorter. I would not be surprised if I failed the MBE...the questions were that different and more difficult to me.

No. I am really glad I bought the Emanuel's book. If I have do to this again, I'm going to have to buy the other ones and the PMBRs. (Really hoping it doesn't come to that...)

glitter178 wrote:No. I am really glad I bought the Emanuel's book. If I have do to this again, I'm going to have to buy the other ones and the PMBRs. (Really hoping it doesn't come to that...)

I heard good things about Adaptibar. If I have to retake, I'm definitely doing Adaptibar and either Kaplan or Themis.

The Emanuel book alone is worth the buy for the MBE tips it gives, even if you don't complete all the questions (I think I only did 15 questions per subject, but now I wish I had done them all).

Neve wrote:

glitter178 wrote:No. I am really glad I bought the Emanuel's book. If I have do to this again, I'm going to have to buy the other ones and the PMBRs. (Really hoping it doesn't come to that...)

I heard good things about Adaptibar. If I have to retake, I'm definitely doing Adaptibar and either Kaplan or Themis.

The Emanuel book alone is worth the buy for the exam tips it gives, even if you don't complete all the question (I think I only did 15 questions per subject, but I wish I had done them all).

Good idea on Adaptibar, I forgot about that one. I did every Barbri question and all of the Emanuel's ones. I don't know if I could improve any more on the mbe, but I know id need to stay fresh. I need next week to come so I'll be on my bar trip and not thinking about November

I did Adaptibar and Barbari and I think no matter which prep company you use, it's good to get another flavor of questions (whether through Adaptibar or some other source; I know the Emanuel's book is highly praised on this site but I didn't use it). With that said, I feel like Adaptibar was great and I felt well prepared for the MBE. Some questions on the actual MBE I felt like I've seen a million times but couldn't remember whether it was from BarBri or Adaptibar but I strongly recommend both.

the Kaplan big red book had been recommended to me and I felt it was really helpful for being drilled on 7 ways to approach a particular issue. The MBE last week to me seemed to seek really imaginative problem solving skills to find the correct answer, even if the black letter law had been encountered before. Kaplan's book did a good job of asking the same thing in a bunch of different ways.
If I have to do this again I'm going to do more Kaplan and the Emanuel materials.

Barbri was terrible. I had to supplement the service heavily.

I completed 35% of the Babri Pace program and I feel that I was adequately prepared. There were some tricky questions in the MBE, but Barbri's simulated MBE was way harder and only comparable to the PM MBE. I never finished Barbri 100 questions sets with time to spare, but I finished the MBE with about 20 minutes to spare for each section.

OhScalia wrote:I completed 35% of the Babri Pace program and I feel that I was adequately prepared. There were some tricky questions in the MBE, but Barbri's simulated MBE was way harder and only comparable to the PM MBE. I never finished Barbri 100 questions sets with time to spare, but I finished the MBE with about 20 minutes to spare for each section.

I'm the opposite. I did 100% of the paced program and all of the MBE questions (well, minus two mixed sets). I was getting 80%+ correct through the last three weeks and was finishing about an hour early. On the real thing? lol. Much slower and seemed much more difficult. Maybe it wasn't and I'm just more on edge because it's real? Everyone says it was more difficult. I don't know if it was tougher, it was just different. And game day jitters are a very real thing that slows many down.

So obviously there were definitely things on the MBE that barbri prepared us for, the problem for me was that the MBE tested those rules in ways I wasn't used to and because of that I talked myself out of all the right answers or wasn't able to see what they were trying to get at in the facts. With barbri, at first I was doing average/a little below average and then towards the end I was doing above average. I think I was doing above average at the end because I got used to the way barbri set up their fact patterns/knew what they were looking for. I felt they also pressed on certain issues in their questions a little too much ( like a little much on defamation, but maybe others will disagree). Needless to say, I was kind of blindsided last week. I felt that when I took the MPRE, the barbri questions were much more helpful.

Also, on the simulated MBE and in other practice questions they asked about water rights, meanwhile if you look at the NCBE MBE outline and maybe I totally missed it, but water rights doesn't seem to be on their property outline any longer meaning it is no longer tested, while other topics that were never discussed and showed up on the real MBE are on the NCBE MBE outline.

Don't feel like this is Barbri's fault. NCBE is changing the way they are testing these subjects. I did over 1200 NCBE problems and all the OPE sets that were released. The AM session was just different. Fair housing? Bail/8th Amendment? 50% of prop questions were mortgage questions that were tested differently. There's only so much barbri can teach us.

lmr wrote:Don't feel like this is Barbri's fault. NCBE is changing the way they are testing these subjects. I did over 1200 NCBE problems and all the OPE sets that were released. The AM session was just different. Fair housing? Bail/8th Amendment? 50% of prop questions were mortgage questions that were tested differently. There's only so much barbri can teach us.

Basically this. Barbri prepared me phenomenally well for the NCBE problems and the OPEs that I did. But what was on those was a far cry from this MBE.

lmr wrote:Don't feel like this is Barbri's fault. NCBE is changing the way they are testing these subjects. I did over 1200 NCBE problems and all the OPE sets that were released. The AM session was just different. Fair housing? Bail/8th Amendment? 50% of prop questions were mortgage questions that were tested differently. There's only so much barbri can teach us.

We must have received the same exam form because after I got done with that very difficult AM session with those questions on the 8th and Fair Housing Act and circling a ton of questions (I circled the ones I wasn't sure on with the intent of going back to review them, but didn't have time in the end), I wanted to know why I didn't bring a noose with me to hang myself during the break. Instead, I had coffee and a sandwich in my car and reviewed my notes (and yes, looked up some AM questions) and got back for a far better PM session.....but still...those AM questions

Neve wrote:

lmr wrote:Don't feel like this is Barbri's fault. NCBE is changing the way they are testing these subjects. I did over 1200 NCBE problems and all the OPE sets that were released. The AM session was just different. Fair housing? Bail/8th Amendment? 50% of prop questions were mortgage questions that were tested differently. There's only so much barbri can teach us.

We must have received the same exam form because after I got done with that very difficult AM session with those questions on the 8th and Fair Housing Act and circling a ton of questions (I circled the ones I wasn't sure on with the intent of going back to review them, but didn't have time in the end), I wanted to know why I didn't bring a noose with me to hang myself during the break. Instead, I had coffee and a sandwich in my car and reviewed my notes (and yes, looked up some AM questions) and got back for a far better PM session.....but still...those AM questions

Kind of funny but i'm pretty sure the FHA question was actually in my easier (PM) set. Does that mean it's experimental? I have no clue how the test forms work. I just know for sure my PM session was more aligned w previous NCBE exams minus a few weird questions that made me roll my eyes and shrug in disbelief.