MBE - how'd you feel? Forum

History_Buff · Post by **History_Buff** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:43 pm

jaysnooginz wrote:
Companion Cube wrote:
Veridian40 wrote:
jaysnooginz wrote:It was difficult for me because a lot of the questions were ambiguously worded.
QFT. I think I'm done talking about this damn test until November, but this is the truth of why it was so poorly received. Looking through this forum and seeing the the difference of opinion that intelligent, well-educated, well-prepared people are having over a multiple choice exam is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Multiple choice questions should have a cut and dry answer. Not be so nuanced they can be debated ad nauseum.
One of my professors sits on a committee that drafts MC questions (don't remember if it was for state portion or for MBE) but he said that they take pride in doing crap like that (re: ambiguity). :/
And he should burn in figurative fire.

I'd be okay with actual fire.

jaysnooginz · Post by **jaysnooginz** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:46 pm

There were several questions that, if they were essays, I would have wrote "and we need more facts before we can come to a conclusion on this issue."

musicfor18 · Post by **musicfor18** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:46 pm

kyle010723 wrote:Honestly I dont know if it was hard or just extremely poorly drafted. It felt like we were doing the first draft of the questions, which would make sense since they draft new questions every time (I think?). Whereas for a bar prep company, their questions were so well drafted cause they've been using the same questions over and over.

I echo what had been said, if the collective hive of TLS cannot figure this thing out, I dont know who could.

I agree, except I tend to think they wrote the questions that way on purpose. Also, I think they do reuse questions for a period of time until they retire them. That's when they get released to the likes of Adaptibar, etc.

Bubbles 4 Life · Post by **Bubbles 4 Life** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:49 pm

jaysnooginz wrote:There were several questions that, if they were essays, I would have wrote "and we need more facts before we can come to a conclusion on this issue."

That's why you are supposed to pick the "best" answer. Many of the MBE questions are built to test to see if you can figure out the best answer out of several correct answers. Many times the differences between these answers are arbitrary and next to impossible to separate, but that's the idea.

musicfor18 · Post by **musicfor18** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:51 pm

jaysnooginz wrote:There were several questions that, if they were essays, I would have wrote "and we need more facts before we can come to a conclusion on this issue."

Totally. There were several "what would be the best argument" questions where I didn't know whether I was supposed to assume the facts in the answer choice were true or not. They should have been crystal clear about that. E.g., "Which of the following would be the defendant's best argument, assuming it could be proven" or "Based on the facts above, which would be the defendant's best argument." As they were written, there were several answer choices where I thought "that would clearly be the best argument if it were true, but I don't know if I'm supposed to assume it's true or not."

Arbinshire · Post by **Arbinshire** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:58 pm

jaysnooginz wrote:There were several questions that, if they were essays, I would have wrote "and we need more facts before we can come to a conclusion on this issue."

Thats half the MBE right there.

History_Buff · Post by **History_Buff** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:06 pm

If the MBE shakes out to be the same kind of deal that it was last year pitchforks and torches should be involved.

There's some completely valid speculation that the bar exam is being made harder because they're trying to lessen the influx of new lawyers.

Pleasye · Post by **Pleasye** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:07 pm

History_Buff wrote:If the MBE shakes out to be the same kind of deal that it was last year pitchforks and torches should be involved.

There's some completely valid speculation that the bar exam is being made harder because they're trying to lessen the influx of new lawyers.

It would be nice if they did this at the fucking front end not once we're all drowning in debt. JFC everything about law school is such a scam.

Veridian40 · Post by **Veridian40** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:12 pm

History_Buff wrote:If the MBE shakes out to be the same kind of deal that it was last year pitchforks and torches should be involved.

There's some completely valid speculation that the bar exam is being made harder because they're trying to lessen the influx of new lawyers.

It's one thing to make the MBE difficult so that only those who have truly worked hard, are intelligent, diligent, etc... make it into this oh, so prestigious profession. It's another entirely to make it a crapshoot. I just pray I passed the thing now, so I don't have to try taking it again in a few years when Secured Transactions, Wills, and Conflict of Laws are all on it (if Wednesday was any indication of things to come).

With that said, I think I'm out. This thread is stressing me too badly. I wish you all the best of luck, both in having passed this test and in your future careers.

Good Guy Gaud · Post by **Good Guy Gaud** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:14 pm

Pleasye wrote:
History_Buff wrote:If the MBE shakes out to be the same kind of deal that it was last year pitchforks and torches should be involved.

There's some completely valid speculation that the bar exam is being made harder because they're trying to lessen the influx of new lawyers.
It would be nice if they did this at the fucking front end not once we're all drowning in debt. JFC everything about law school is such a scam.

freal

Lobolaw1984 · Post by **Lobolaw1984** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:32 pm

LAW813FL wrote:This thread is making me lose my mind...each question I realize I get wrong just ruins my day

You don't know if you got it right or wrong. We are discussing these questions on memory alone, who knows if anyone remembers it accurately through the fog of war.

kjartan · Post by **kjartan** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:50 pm

Apparently, a lot of people missed the OP

despina wrote:NO discussion of specific questions, of course.

Everyone discussing specific questions should kindly shut the fuck up.

Good Guy Gaud · Post by **Good Guy Gaud** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 3:20 pm

It's going to be funny reading back through this thread after we've all passed.

odoylerulez · Post by **odoylerulez** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 3:27 pm

Good Guy Gaud wrote:It's going to be funny reading back through this thread after we've all passed.

I sure hope so. I like to think I still passed, because essay day went well, but that MBE was so, so terrible that I really won't be 100% shocked if I failed.

It is a nice thought that most of us are probably going to be above-median test-takers though. Obviously we care enough to keep posting in this shitty thread and that probably correlates pretty well with how hard some of us worked and how badly we wanted to pass.

sd5289 · Post by **sd5289** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 4:23 pm

I'll admit to being one of the people who chose the middle option (about as hard as I expected), but I wonder if that's not because by the time I got near the end of the Themis mixed sets, which at times I couldn't tell if they were written in English or not, I had just gotten used to really badly written questions and questions that have 2 lines of facts and say "what should the court decide?" Um, I don't know. I don't even know what's going on!

I remember there were a few slam dunks, and then there were a LOT of 50/50s for me (and a few "I have no idea"). My strategy was to try and figure out the correct answer in my head before looking at the answer choices, and if it wasn't in there, but there was something similar, I'd choose the similar one and then just trust my instinct even if other answers looked really attractive.

I'm wondering for everyone who thought the MBE was much harder than they thought it would be, what were your final MBE practice questions in the week or so before? I know a lot of us were bitching about how bad the Themis questions were, but now I'm kind of glad they did that to us.

sd5289 · Post by **sd5289** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 4:30 pm

dietcoke0 wrote:Anyone finish super fast? Been hearing a lot of people saying it was a time crunch, but I finished like 55 minutes early in the am session, and like 35 minutes early in the pm session. I don't go back to questions because I've found I second the correct answer too much, and am good at recognizing correct answers right away (when reading the prompt, I try to guess what they will ask, and what the correct question will be, and at least in practice q's it's generally correct) but was shocked when I heard people were having time issues. Just seeing I was the only one, or if I was foolish. I never felt confident about the answers, but learned a while ago to trust my instincts.

Yes, I did. I finished almost an hour early during the AM session and about 40 minutes early in the PM session. I was definitely not the only one (NY taker) in my "room" (I use that term lightly in describing the Javits Center) to do so either. A lot of people were milling around before the 15 minute mark on MBE day. That was not the case during the NY essay day (I got out just before the 15 that day).

ETA: however, this was consistent with my practice times too. Themis would give us a little over an hour to do a 34-questions set, and I'd always finish with at least 15-20 minutes left.

odoylerulez · Post by **odoylerulez** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 4:34 pm

sd5289 wrote:I'll admit to being one of the people who chose the middle option (about as hard as I expected), but I wonder if that's not because by the time I got near the end of the Themis mixed sets, which at times I couldn't tell if they were written in English or not, I had just gotten used to really badly written questions and questions that have 2 lines of facts and say "what should the court decide?" Um, I don't know. I don't even know what's going on!

I remember there were a few slam dunks, and then there were a LOT of 50/50s for me (and a few "I have no idea"). My strategy was to try and figure out the correct answer in my head before looking at the answer choices, and if it wasn't in there, but there was something similar, I'd choose the similar one and then just trust my instinct even if other answers looked really attractive.

I'm wondering for everyone who thought the MBE was much harder than they thought it would be, what were your final MBE practice questions in the week or so before? I know a lot of us were bitching about how bad the Themis questions were, but now I'm kind of glad they did that to us.

Kaplan gave us a 200 question "MBE Final Review" that we took under timed conditions 12 days before the real MBE (7/17). We were told that exam was at least 15 points harder than the real MBE.

I disagree with that assessment - I thought the MBE was every bit as hard as that Kaplan final -- if not slightly harder.

There were more gimmes on the real bar that the Kaplan final, but there were also more absurdly difficult questions so it sort of balanced out. I bet the Kaplan people will see raw scores pretty comparable to what their final review score was, which for a lot of people may mean failing because the national average for Kaplan's final = 135 scaled.

anon sequitur · Post by **anon sequitur** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 4:51 pm

sd5289 wrote:I'll admit to being one of the people who chose the middle option (about as hard as I expected), but I wonder if that's not because by the time I got near the end of the Themis mixed sets, which at times I couldn't tell if they were written in English or not, I had just gotten used to really badly written questions and questions that have 2 lines of facts and say "what should the court decide?" Um, I don't know. I don't even know what's going on!

This is exactly how I felt, Themis uses mostly real MBE questions with some that are "adapted" in some way, and in every set of questions they gave us to do for the last couple weeks, there were at least a few that would make me angry because they were stupid, pointless and even with a written explanation didn't really make sense. So I felt pretty normal seeing those on test day. Not normal as in "oh, I got this", but rather "jesus why do MBE questions suck so much?". Perhaps Barbri and Kaplan don't have as many stupid questions in their practice sets.

musicfor18 · Post by **musicfor18** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:02 pm

anon sequitur wrote:
sd5289 wrote:I'll admit to being one of the people who chose the middle option (about as hard as I expected), but I wonder if that's not because by the time I got near the end of the Themis mixed sets, which at times I couldn't tell if they were written in English or not, I had just gotten used to really badly written questions and questions that have 2 lines of facts and say "what should the court decide?" Um, I don't know. I don't even know what's going on!
This is exactly how I felt, Themis uses mostly real MBE questions with some that are "adapted" in some way, and in every set of questions they gave us to do for the last couple weeks, there were at least a few that would make me angry because they were stupid, pointless and even with a written explanation didn't really make sense. So I felt pretty normal seeing those on test day. Not normal as in "oh, I got this", but rather "jesus why do MBE questions suck so much?". Perhaps Barbri and Kaplan don't have as many stupid questions in their practice sets.

Barbri gives tons of really hard and stupid questions, but they're stupid in a different way. They're not ambiguous.

sd5289 · Post by **sd5289** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:20 pm

musicfor18 wrote:
anon sequitur wrote:
sd5289 wrote:I'll admit to being one of the people who chose the middle option (about as hard as I expected), but I wonder if that's not because by the time I got near the end of the Themis mixed sets, which at times I couldn't tell if they were written in English or not, I had just gotten used to really badly written questions and questions that have 2 lines of facts and say "what should the court decide?" Um, I don't know. I don't even know what's going on!
This is exactly how I felt, Themis uses mostly real MBE questions with some that are "adapted" in some way, and in every set of questions they gave us to do for the last couple weeks, there were at least a few that would make me angry because they were stupid, pointless and even with a written explanation didn't really make sense. So I felt pretty normal seeing those on test day. Not normal as in "oh, I got this", but rather "jesus why do MBE questions suck so much?". Perhaps Barbri and Kaplan don't have as many stupid questions in their practice sets.
Barbri gives tons of really hard and stupid questions, but they're stupid in a different way. They're not ambiguous.

I felt like ours were. There were a lot of PQ's near the end where it'd be 2-3 lines of ambiguous facts that could be interpreted in a variety of ways, and then the question would be like "what is the outcome" or some complicated question about multi-party litigation or whatever.

Also, I feel like trying to isolate the strengths/weaknesses of our prep is a far more productive conversation than the neurotic discussion over specific questions and answers. I can't believe everyone's still remembering specific questions. It's already vanishing from my brain.

jaysnooginz · Post by **jaysnooginz** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:22 pm

For Barbri, I usually knew whether the answer was correct if I knew the answer. MBE, even if i thought i knew the answer I i didnt know if it was correct or not a lot of the time.

musicfor18 · Post by **musicfor18** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:25 pm

jaysnooginz wrote:For Barbri, I usually knew whether the answer was correct if I knew the answer. MBE, even if i thought i knew the answer I i didnt know if it was correct or not a lot of the time.

What you said here seems to make no sense, except that I know exactly what you mean!

sd5289 · Post by **sd5289** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:25 pm

jaysnooginz wrote:For Barbri, I usually knew whether the answer was correct if I knew the answer. MBE, even if i thought i knew the answer I i didnt know if it was correct or not a lot of the time.

True. I definitely had quite a few where the answer in my head wasn't identical to any of the answer choices. I'd just go with the one that was closest. We'll find out at the end of October whether that was a good thing to do or a disastrous thing to do.

musicfor18 · Post by **musicfor18** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:34 pm

sd5289 wrote:
jaysnooginz wrote:For Barbri, I usually knew whether the answer was correct if I knew the answer. MBE, even if i thought i knew the answer I i didnt know if it was correct or not a lot of the time.
True. I definitely had quite a few where the answer in my head wasn't identical to any of the answer choices. I'd just go with the one that was closest. We'll find out at the end of October whether that was a good thing to do or a disastrous thing to do.

(A) Defendant prevails because he argued X
(B) Defendant prevails because what he argued is X
(C) Defendant loses because he didn't argue not X
(D) Defendant loses because X and what he argued were identical

Maybe I'm hallucinating, but that's what it sometimes felt like I was choosing between.

sd5289 · Post by **sd5289** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 5:38 pm

musicfor18 wrote:
sd5289 wrote:
jaysnooginz wrote:For Barbri, I usually knew whether the answer was correct if I knew the answer. MBE, even if i thought i knew the answer I i didnt know if it was correct or not a lot of the time.
True. I definitely had quite a few where the answer in my head wasn't identical to any of the answer choices. I'd just go with the one that was closest. We'll find out at the end of October whether that was a good thing to do or a disastrous thing to do.
(A) Defendant prevails because he argued X
(B) Defendant prevails because what he argued is X
(C) Defendant loses because he didn't argue not X
(D) Defendant loses because X and what he argued were identical

Maybe I'm hallucinating, but that's what it sometimes felt like I was choosing between.

For real.

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