February 2016 MBE Reactions (Don't discuss specific questions) Forum

[Tarheel19932005]

FIRST THINGS FIRST PLEASE BE CAREFUL TO KEEP YOUR POSTS BROAD AND ABSTRACT SO AS NOT TO DISCUSS THE SPECIFICS OF THE MBE.

I'm hoping this board can serve as a friendly forum for those who took the February 2016 MBE to discuss their reactions to the test.

Please feel free to ask questions about the law, but remember to keep your questions and answers broad so as not to break the rules.

Good luck to everyone!

[starryski]

FIRST THINGS FIRST PLEASE BE CAREFUL TO KEEP YOUR POSTS BROAD AND ABSTRACT SO AS NOT TO DISCUSS THE SPECIFICS OF THE MBE.

I'm hoping this board can serve as a friendly forum for those who took the February 2016 MBE to discuss their reactions to the test.

Please feel free to ask questions about the law, but remember to keep your questions and answers broad so as not to break the rules.

Good luck to everyone!

more straightforward than july. still think i didn't improve. repeater here.

[Raiden]

Felt a lot better than July. Not sure if that is a good thing, and I was picking the red herring the whole time. But I really think I did better and would be surprised otherwise. Adaptibar really helped.

[jamescastle]

The general assessment on the now-closed topic was that this was significantly easier and/or more straightforward than July 2015. (Though there was still heated debate on a few specific questions obviously.)
I agree 100% with that.

I think I studied "smarter" (though less) for this past MBE than in July.
For BARBRI at least, the civil procedure prep is way off from what the questions are like though that might be improved for this next batch of books. Didn't feel like BARBRI fact patterns read like the actual questions but they were closer than in July where I felt like I was taking a test of random exceptions to exceptions to exceptions written in gobbledygook.

[DueProcessDoWheelies]

Better than July. More straightforward + better preparation on my part. Still hard at times though.

Civ Pro questions were hard IMO. Con Law was also surprisingly hard.

[Alh0324]

I felt like I had a lot of the same letter choices being bubbled in! But, I did find it a lot better than the July MBE, but who knows if my score will show that.

[Em_Banc]

Feel much, much better than I did in July. July was brutal--I had to completely guess on the last 10 or 12 in each section, and this might sound nuts, but I had a song stuck in my head during most of the morning portion and had serious issues focusing. This time, I completely guessed on only 2 or 3 in each section, and I finished with a minute or two to spare. I also didn't listen to music in the morning for fear of a song getting stuck in my head again, and my focus was 99%.

I practiced somewhere around 1300 questions this time...I probably only did about 900 for July. I used Themis for both July and Feb, and I felt that the practice Qs were pretty adequate and representative of the actual MBE, more so in Feb than July. I think getting angry at the exam and telling myself that I know this stuff inside and out helped. Also, this time around I was much more active/engaged with the questions during the exam (underlining, circling, looking for those crucial words that specific questions often turn on). I attacked each one and moved the f on.

In July I was hitting 55-65% correct when practicing, ended up with a score somewhere between 133-145 (CA doesn't tell you your exact score; I only know this much from NCBE's score services re waiving into jurisdictions). This time around I was routinely hitting 68-74% correct, really hoping for a 148+. My answers in Feb were frequently 3 or 4 of the same letter in a row.

[NY_Sea]

I felt like I had a lot of the same letter choices being bubbled in! But, I did find it a lot better than the July MBE, but who knows if my score will show that.

I had two long stretches and a bunch of 2/3/4 runs... I also thought it was easier than July, but calling this test easy like calling a colonoscopy pleasurable.

[nyfailedjuly2015]

Of all the subjects, Conlaw seemed to be the least tricky, especially if you watched Chemerinsky's bar review lecture. He said "they are going to test you on this like this" and they did. There were recognizable fact patterns that mirrored real life cases.

Civ pro was the trickiest. I think you could've known the meat and potatoes (jurisdiction, pleadings, motions, discovery, standards of review, etc.) fairly well and still gotten tripped up.

Everything else was inbetween.

Overall, I'd agree that it was more straightforward than July's MBE (on which I got a 135.4). My time management was better so I didn't rush through a bunch of questions and then guess on 10 of them, so I expect a higher score.

[DueProcessDoWheelies]

I felt like I had a lot of the same letter choices being bubbled in! But, I did find it a lot better than the July MBE, but who knows if my score will show that.

That's normal, don't look too far into it. Unlike July, I did not notice one letter dominating either the AM or PM sessions.

[iwantmybar]

Personally I bubbled a lot of D's.

Also, there was one raw where there was almost no B.

Anyway...we'll see.

[NY_Sea]

I felt like I had a lot of the same letter choices being bubbled in! But, I did find it a lot better than the July MBE, but who knows if my score will show that.

That's normal, don't look too far into it. Unlike July, I did not notice one letter dominating either the AM or PM sessions.

I agree... Even though I had a few stretches of a lot of the same answer, at the end, they seemed to even out relatively.

[nyfailedjuly2015]

This is what you guys want to talk about? Strings of letters? OK, then. I didn't notice too many 3+ strings of As. i had strings of three Ds, Cs, and Bs.
Overall, the letter distribution seemed pretty normal.

[iwantmybar]

This is what you guys want to talk about? Strings of letters? OK, then. I didn't notice too many 3+ strings of As. i had strings of three Ds, Cs, and Bs.
Overall, the letter distribution seemed pretty normal.

Sorry Mr. retard but i think we are free to talk about anything we want as long as it is not against the rules?

Also Einstein, if people did notice a string of the same letter it is pretty conforting since some of us had the same scantron sheet.

[NY_Sea]

This is what you guys want to talk about? Strings of letters? OK, then. I didn't notice too many 3+ strings of As. i had strings of three Ds, Cs, and Bs.
Overall, the letter distribution seemed pretty normal.

Sorry Mr. retard but i think we are free to talk about anything we want as long as it is not against the rules?

Also Einstein, if people did notice a string of the same letter it is pretty conforting since some of us had the same scantron sheet.

No need for the "R" word... People are obviously on edge and patience runs thin for these couple months, but those kind of names are uncalled for, IMO. I just said something to someone on here, but the "R" word is a step over the line to me.

[DueProcessDoWheelies]

This is what you guys want to talk about? Strings of letters? OK, then. I didn't notice too many 3+ strings of As. i had strings of three Ds, Cs, and Bs.
Overall, the letter distribution seemed pretty normal.

Sorry Mr. retard but i think we are free to talk about anything we want as long as it is not against the rules?

Also Einstein, if people did notice a string of the same letter it is pretty conforting since some of us had the same scantron sheet.

No it isn't, not at all. Aren't there like 10 different forms of the test?

In July the general consensus was there was an abnormally large amount of D answers. There was nothing like that this time. I remember having lots of Ds and Bs in a row and that's it. It means nothing. Those questions that I answered D and B on may have been scattered throughout the test on other forms.

People look too far into this.

[bluesplitter]

Anyone notice a few amount of b's in the pm?....i remember seeing almost no b's in the last column (170ish-200).


Lots of a's and d's in the pm..

[caveman2]

This is what you guys want to talk about? Strings of letters? OK, then. I didn't notice too many 3+ strings of As. i had strings of three Ds, Cs, and Bs.
Overall, the letter distribution seemed pretty normal.

Sorry Mr. retard but i think we are free to talk about anything we want as long as it is not against the rules?

Also Einstein, if people did notice a string of the same letter it is pretty conforting since some of us had the same scantron sheet.

No need for the "R" word... People are obviously on edge and patience runs thin for these couple months, but those kind of names are uncalled for, IMO. I just said something to someone on here, but the "R" word is a step over the line to me.

I agree that the name calling is unnecessary, but someone does need to call out nyfailedjuly2015, because this isn't the first time s/he's said something kind of jerk-ish. Knock it off, guys. There's no reason to be acting like this towards each other. We're all on the same team. Let's be respectful. People can talk about whatever they want. If you don't want to participate in that topic of discussion, then don't. It's real simple.

[NY_Sea]

This is what you guys want to talk about? Strings of letters? OK, then. I didn't notice too many 3+ strings of As. i had strings of three Ds, Cs, and Bs.
Overall, the letter distribution seemed pretty normal.

Sorry Mr. retard but i think we are free to talk about anything we want as long as it is not against the rules?

Also Einstein, if people did notice a string of the same letter it is pretty conforting since some of us had the same scantron sheet.

No need for the "R" word... People are obviously on edge and patience runs thin for these couple months, but those kind of names are uncalled for, IMO. I just said something to someone on here, but the "R" word is a step over the line to me.

I agree that the name calling is unnecessary, but someone does need to call out nyfailedjuly2015, because this isn't the first time s/he's said something kind of jerk-ish. Knock it off, guys. There's no reason to be acting like this towards each other. We're all on the same team. Let's be respectful. People can talk about whatever they want. If you don't want to participate in that topic of discussion, then don't. It's real simple.

Name calling isn't the worst things in the world, but there are certain names that are just a bit much. That one is one of them. Maybe it rubs me the wrong way more than others, but I think it's unnecessary and ignorant.

[nyfailedjuly2015]

I am participating. I said I had a few triple-strings of Ds and Bs. Possibly a triple-string of Cs, but I don't remember any triple-strings of As.

Did anyone get three As in a row?

[FinallyPassedTheBar]

3 or 4 letters in a row doesn't really seem odd to me. But if there were 20 B's in a row, then that would concern me.

[LawGamer]

FIRST THINGS FIRST PLEASE BE CAREFUL TO KEEP YOUR POSTS BROAD AND ABSTRACT SO AS NOT TO DISCUSS THE SPECIFICS OF THE MBE.

I'm hoping this board can serve as a friendly forum for those who took the February 2016 MBE to discuss their reactions to the test.

Please feel free to ask questions about the law, but remember to keep your questions and answers broad so as not to break the rules.

Good luck to everyone!

As background, took the exam in MN. First time taker but I'm also someone with a few years of practice under my belt (graduated in WI, so degree privilege and all that). Used Themis as my review program. Completed about 90% of the program and was generally scoring 70-74% on the PQ sets by the end.

1. Felt pretty good about the MPT, particularly the demand letter question.

2. The MEE was hit or miss. Themis definitely didn't lead you to believe that 4/6 questions would be MEE specific. Some of it was OK, others not so good. On the plus side, the Secured Transaction and Evidence questions was more or less *exactly* what Themis prepared you for. On the other hand, the entirety of Themis' materials on PoAs was a tiny little paragraph at the very back of their wills materials. Thankfully, I practice in that area so I was able to dredge up enough state specific law to answer the question. If I were a law student right out of school with no experience in that subject, I'd be pissed because the Themis materials in no way prepared you to answer that question with any degree of quality.

Overall, felt worse and worse on the MEE the longer it went on. I pretty much didn't know what I was writing by the time I got to the last Family Law question. I chalk that up to getting tired and the fact that we had all of 25-30 minutes for lunch, so I basically didn't get to eat (during the morning session, time was called at 12, but we couldn't leave until everyone's tech problems got solved. ExamSoft and all that, so yeah, we didn't get to leave until about 12:35).

3. The morning MBE was absolutely brutal. The questions were way longer than the ones Themis threw at you. During practice, I would generally complete a 100 question set with maybe 20 minutes remaining to review. During the morning session, I was still bubbling with 5 minutes left on the clock. The morning session we had seemed really weighted towards lengthy Real Property and Civ Pro questions. Guessed on more than a few and walked out feeling that I'd be lucky to hit 60%. The afternoon session was much more in line with what I'd expected going in. Felt pretty good about it, so hopefully it'll all balance out.

The overarching problem I had was that a lot of the questions didn't seem very responsive to what Themis had you to preparing for. I mean, all the material was in there, just not in the percentages they led you to believe. Way more ticky-tack jury and post-trial questions in Civ Pro, a lot more inter-branch relationship questions in Con Law than you saw in the course, etc.

At this point, I'm just hoping to pass. The main source of anxiety is how the essays are graded and scaled because the process is so opaque. The MBE you're either right or wrong with no room for subjective grading. The essay stuff? Who knows. I've found myself stuck playing the guessing game of trying to figure out what my raw score on the essays would be and then I get stressed because I have no idea where that puts me in terms of a scaled score.

I mean, I felt fine about the MPT, but then you start to have doubts about what they are actually looking for. I drafted my demand letter as I would in actual practice - speaking to another attorney while using legal short-hand and not going real deep into the law. If that's what they're looking for, great. Then again, they might be looking for the wacky bar exam world writing where you make a cite after every sentence and discuss the law like you would to a child.

[nyfailedjuly2015]

Is there more than one MPT? My MPT was a memo.

[iwantmybar]

This is what you guys want to talk about? Strings of letters? OK, then. I didn't notice too many 3+ strings of As. i had strings of three Ds, Cs, and Bs.
Overall, the letter distribution seemed pretty normal.

Sorry Mr. retard but i think we are free to talk about anything we want as long as it is not against the rules?

Also Einstein, if people did notice a string of the same letter it is pretty conforting since some of us had the same scantron sheet.

No need for the "R" word... People are obviously on edge and patience runs thin for these couple months, but those kind of names are uncalled for, IMO. I just said something to someone on here, but the "R" word is a step over the line to me.

I agree that the name calling is unnecessary, but someone does need to call out nyfailedjuly2015, because this isn't the first time s/he's said something kind of jerk-ish. Knock it off, guys. There's no reason to be acting like this towards each other. We're all on the same team. Let's be respectful. People can talk about whatever they want. If you don't want to participate in that topic of discussion, then don't. It's real simple.

Name calling isn't the worst things in the world, but there are certain names that are just a bit much. That one is one of them. Maybe it rubs me the wrong way more than others, but I think it's unnecessary and ignorant.

Apologies, didnt want to hurt anyone on here.

[nyfailedjuly2015]

Apologies, didnt want to hurt anyone on here.

It's already forgotten.