Practice Tests vs. The Real Thing Forum

[MichBar]

1. Essays...First of all, the grading from the bar review companies, at least I know with Kaplan, is incredibly unrealistic. I have access to a book that has actual student answers (from candidates that failed) and shows them against the model answer. When I came across one of these essays, Kaplan gave me a 4, because, of course, I didn't regurgitate everything completely verbatim from the outline. When I compared to the far sloppier actual student answer from an actual exam from three years ago, it got a 9. So take that for what it's worth. So unless the actual essay grading has gotten way more nuts, I have no idea how I'll actually do but likely much better than Kaplan's graders suggest.

2. MBE's...I've done two full length PT's, one from Kaplan and another from another bar company and got exactly 70% each time. The other one was just the other day so I think I've peaked, and with one more day to go, I don't see that going anywhere. Does anyone who has taken it before know how close their "real" MBE scores are to what they were getting with PT's?

Good luck and best wishes to everyone.

[TxBarTaker09]

If you are scoring 70% on Kaplan's practice test you are more than ready. Keep in mind there are 10 non-graded questions on the real MBE, and the grade is curved so it's essentially pushed up 10 to 15 points. You got 70% of 200 questions correct, you are golden.

[fslexcduck]

Completely agree with your first point. Anyone looking at sample answers from real tests should realize that the grading is way more lax than the bar prep companies who basically won't give you over a 50 if you can't spit things back word for word. On the real thing, I've seen model answers where all of the law is restated in people's own words. The most important thing is to know what they're asking, organize and explain your answer well, and you're golden. All this freaking out about regurgitation is useless and just making other people way more worried than they need to be.

IMO my time is better spent understanding a law well so I can state the basic terms AND apply it to the facts than being able to spit it back out but not having a solid understanding of how to apply it.

[Metaread]

What if you just make up a law but apply the rule, and do the rest of IRAC for the essays? I'm worried I won't have a clue about what to write when I get an essay bout trusts/wills/rando other topic.

[redblueyellow]

What if you just make up a law but apply the rule, and do the rest of IRAC for the essays? I'm worried I won't have a clue about what to write when I get an essay bout trusts/wills/rando other topic.

It is my understanding that rule statement points are allocated in 25% increments (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Full credit is the rule verbatim or very close to it in your own words and it goes progressively down from there. No idea if true, but apparently if you make up rule statements, you can't get more than half at best.

Gonna suck when I inevitably blank on something routine...

"An assualt, uh, is a battery but where you miss."

[Metaread]

That is understandable. I am glad they give some points for trying to make up a rule that fits, at least.

[mclilazng]

1. Essays...First of all, the grading from the bar review companies, at least I know with Kaplan, is incredibly unrealistic. I have access to a book that has actual student answers (from candidates that failed) and shows them against the model answer. When I came across one of these essays, Kaplan gave me a 4, because, of course, I didn't regurgitate everything completely verbatim from the outline. When I compared to the far sloppier actual student answer from an actual exam from three years ago, it got a 9. So take that for what it's worth. So unless the actual essay grading has gotten way more nuts, I have no idea how I'll actually do but likely much better than Kaplan's graders suggest.

2. MBE's...I've done two full length PT's, one from Kaplan and another from another bar company and got exactly 70% each time. The other one was just the other day so I think I've peaked, and with one more day to go, I don't see that going anywhere. Does anyone who has taken it before know how close their "real" MBE scores are to what they were getting with PT's?

Good luck and best wishes to everyone.

I think they're just trying to prepare you the best they can. I took Themis for NY and 3.5 to 4/5 essays were almost a mirror image of Themis practice essays. I didn't have as much time to study so I basically rewrote a lot of the model answers for Themis and I probably passed because of that.

AND GOD of course . Luck doesn't always work.