I'd be using Barbri as my "main course" but I was considering getting Adaptibar to work through the questions with a CMR in front of me and looking up the law as I'm doing the questions. I've never focused well on lectures, and I've always been a more interactive learner - it seems like looking at a problem and looking up the answer would keep me more engaged and teach me more BLL since I'll keep looking up the things I'm unsure about over and over.
Anybody see any downsides to this? As I said, I'm also planning on using Barbri and would be using Adaptibar only as a supplement.
Open Book Adaptibar Forum
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THE_U
- Posts: 204
- Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 7:29 pm
Re: Open Book Adaptibar
I wouldn't do open-book for anything while studying, except maybe for first essay or two (but that' not what this thread is about!)
If you can't get through the lectures (which is understandable, because they aren't that great), I'd recommend READING the CMR and outlining. The CMR is the best resource for the MBE, IMO. The lecture hand-outs are too bare-bones, despite what most of the lecturers say. The CMR has everything that you need and you can literally only study the CMR and be more than fine. After you do that for all of the subjects, then I would start doing practice questions CLOSED-book.
If looking things up constantly is going to keep you engaged, you will still get that from doing practice questions closed-book, because you can and SHOULD look up the black letter law each time you get a problem wrong or right. The MBE is partly about how much you know the law and can apply it, and partly how well you can do that by spending no more than 1 minute and 48 seconds per problem. Slowing things down that much by doing problems open book just seems like you are forming bad test-taking habits and getting used to approaching the MBE in a way that is totally unlike testing conditions. Also, Adaptibar tracks your timing on each question and you will mess these useful statistics up by taking each question so slowly.
Lastly, I'd focus much more on Adaptibar for MBE practice questions rather than using it only as a supplement. Barbri's MBE questions are pretty unrealistic in form and in difficulty. I strongly believe that an important part of MBE prep is confidence-building and I just could never build confidence while doing some of Barbri's questions sets because of how unnecessarily difficult they can be (some question sets have averages in the 50% area). Also, this past February, I saw a few fact patterns on the real MBE that closely resembled past Adaptibar questions. Using real MBE questions for your primary practice is really a no-brainer. With that said, I did use Barbri as a supplement to mix things up.
Good luck!
If you can't get through the lectures (which is understandable, because they aren't that great), I'd recommend READING the CMR and outlining. The CMR is the best resource for the MBE, IMO. The lecture hand-outs are too bare-bones, despite what most of the lecturers say. The CMR has everything that you need and you can literally only study the CMR and be more than fine. After you do that for all of the subjects, then I would start doing practice questions CLOSED-book.
If looking things up constantly is going to keep you engaged, you will still get that from doing practice questions closed-book, because you can and SHOULD look up the black letter law each time you get a problem wrong or right. The MBE is partly about how much you know the law and can apply it, and partly how well you can do that by spending no more than 1 minute and 48 seconds per problem. Slowing things down that much by doing problems open book just seems like you are forming bad test-taking habits and getting used to approaching the MBE in a way that is totally unlike testing conditions. Also, Adaptibar tracks your timing on each question and you will mess these useful statistics up by taking each question so slowly.
Lastly, I'd focus much more on Adaptibar for MBE practice questions rather than using it only as a supplement. Barbri's MBE questions are pretty unrealistic in form and in difficulty. I strongly believe that an important part of MBE prep is confidence-building and I just could never build confidence while doing some of Barbri's questions sets because of how unnecessarily difficult they can be (some question sets have averages in the 50% area). Also, this past February, I saw a few fact patterns on the real MBE that closely resembled past Adaptibar questions. Using real MBE questions for your primary practice is really a no-brainer. With that said, I did use Barbri as a supplement to mix things up.
Good luck!
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psu2016
- Posts: 163
- Joined: Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:59 pm
Re: Open Book Adaptibar
Thanks for this great response!THE_U wrote:I wouldn't do open-book for anything while studying, except maybe for first essay or two (but that' not what this thread is about!)
If you can't get through the lectures (which is understandable, because they aren't that great), I'd recommend READING the CMR and outlining. The CMR is the best resource for the MBE, IMO. The lecture hand-outs are too bare-bones, despite what most of the lecturers say. The CMR has everything that you need and you can literally only study the CMR and be more than fine. After you do that for all of the subjects, then I would start doing practice questions CLOSED-book.
If looking things up constantly is going to keep you engaged, you will still get that from doing practice questions closed-book, because you can and SHOULD look up the black letter law each time you get a problem wrong or right. The MBE is partly about how much you know the law and can apply it, and partly how well you can do that by spending no more than 1 minute and 48 seconds per problem. Slowing things down that much by doing problems open book just seems like you are forming bad test-taking habits and getting used to approaching the MBE in a way that is totally unlike testing conditions. Also, Adaptibar tracks your timing on each question and you will mess these useful statistics up by taking each question so slowly.
Lastly, I'd focus much more on Adaptibar for MBE practice questions rather than using it only as a supplement. Barbri's MBE questions are pretty unrealistic in form and in difficulty. I strongly believe that an important part of MBE prep is confidence-building and I just could never build confidence while doing some of Barbri's questions sets because of how unnecessarily difficult they can be (some question sets have averages in the 50% area). Also, this past February, I saw a few fact patterns on the real MBE that closely resembled past Adaptibar questions. Using real MBE questions for your primary practice is really a no-brainer. With that said, I did use Barbri as a supplement to mix things up.
Good luck!
