What does the MBE 175 change really mean? Forum

[Sonny1211]

Hey,

I've not heard much as to what the change of graded questions may mean. Does it make the test harder in that questions count more, or is it irrelevant. Have any of your bar prep companies mentioned if this change is supposed to lower the MBE score or raise it.

I am a retaker and I scored a 131 in the previous exam. On the MBE I have timkng issues and end up having to guess the last 8 questions. Thinking of being more tactful with this approach taking into account some of your advice. Currently, I have self-prepared for the bar with adaptibar(finished all questions at 71%)and other material from my previous course, my timing has improved but still deficient overall.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks

[cnk1220]

Hey,

I've not heard much as to what the change of graded questions may mean. Does it make the test harder in that questions count more, or is it irrelevant. Have any of your bar prep companies mentioned if this change is supposed to lower the MBE score or raise it.

I am a retaker and I scored a 131 in the previous exam. On the MBE I have timkng issues and end up having to guess the last 8 questions. Thinking of being more tactful with this approach taking into account some of your advice. Currently, I have self-prepared for the bar with adaptibar(finished all questions at 71%)and other material from my previous course, my timing has improved but still deficient overall.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks

.

[judysmith]

Hey,

I've not heard much as to what the change of graded questions may mean. Does it make the test harder in that questions count more, or is it irrelevant. Have any of your bar prep companies mentioned if this change is supposed to lower the MBE score or raise it.

I am a retaker and I scored a 131 in the previous exam. On the MBE I have timkng issues and end up having to guess the last 8 questions. Thinking of being more tactful with this approach taking into account some of your advice. Currently, I have self-prepared for the bar with adaptibar(finished all questions at 71%)and other material from my previous course, my timing has improved but still deficient overall.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks

I can't imagine the MBE all of a sudden being harder because of it, I think they will scale to reflect the change so that a "140" in July '16 will reflect a "140" on this exam too. How the scaling works, who knows, that's the mysteries of the NCBE.

Sonny did you finish adaptibar with 71% overall or are you hitting 70 percent in each subject? You are doing great you don't have anything to worry about I think as adaptibar says to be in a good spot to hit 70%

[umichman]

ANy idea what percentage i need to be in in BarBri to be ok?

[davidtothej05]

ANy idea what percentage i need to be in in BarBri to be ok?

They usually tell you for each test, but I think it is generally between 56% and 61% is where you are shooting at for each exam.

[Sonny1211]

Hey,

I've not heard much as to what the change of graded questions may mean. Does it make the test harder in that questions count more, or is it irrelevant. Have any of your bar prep companies mentioned if this change is supposed to lower the MBE score or raise it.

I am a retaker and I scored a 131 in the previous exam. On the MBE I have timkng issues and end up having to guess the last 8 questions. Thinking of being more tactful with this approach taking into account some of your advice. Currently, I have self-prepared for the bar with adaptibar(finished all questions at 71%)and other material from my previous course, my timing has improved but still deficient overall.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks

I can't imagine the MBE all of a sudden being harder because of it, I think they will scale to reflect the change so that a "140" in July '16 will reflect a "140" on this exam too. How the scaling works, who knows, that's the mysteries of the NCBE.

I think that makes sence, I think I read somewhere that this means each question counts more. How to deal with that idk, perhaps it means when you see a question or of the norm you need to not dwell on it and move on making time for questions that count(that is if they could be deciphered)

[Sonny1211]

Hey,

I've not heard much as to what the change of graded questions may mean. Does it make the test harder in that questions count more, or is it irrelevant. Have any of your bar prep companies mentioned if this change is supposed to lower the MBE score or raise it.

I am a retaker and I scored a 131 in the previous exam. On the MBE I have timkng issues and end up having to guess the last 8 questions. Thinking of being more tactful with this approach taking into account some of your advice. Currently, I have self-prepared for the bar with adaptibar(finished all questions at 71%)and other material from my previous course, my timing has improved but still deficient overall.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks

I can't imagine the MBE all of a sudden being harder because of it, I think they will scale to reflect the change so that a "140" in July '16 will reflect a "140" on this exam too. How the scaling works, who knows, that's the mysteries of the NCBE.

Sonny did you finish adaptibar with 71% overall or are you hitting 70 percent in each subject? You are doing great you don't have anything to worry about I think as adaptibar says to be in a good spot to hit 70%

I'm scoring overall 71% for the total 1740 questions. But not 70 on every subject, more like 65% on most, 60 on civ pro and 85% on crim and evidence.

[umichman]

ANy idea what percentage i need to be in in BarBri to be ok?

They usually tell you for each test, but I think it is generally between 56% and 61% is where you are shooting at for each exam.

So is adaptibar significantly easier than barbri?

[cnk1220]

ANy idea what percentage i need to be in in BarBri to be ok?

They usually tell you for each test, but I think it is generally between 56% and 61% is where you are shooting at for each exam.

So is adaptibar significantly easier than barbri?

Yup.

[YalteseFalcon]

Thanks for asking this question. I'm sure I'm not alone in trying to predict my performance after simulated exams, based on historical scales on the MBE. I've wondered how this would affect that prediction.

I've come across this on a few other forums and articles.

The general sense is that the negative consequence is fewer opportunities to gain points. The positive consequence is that the 175 opportunities we DO have are worth slightly more. But, I guess a corollary of that is incorrect answers are also worth more. So, if you get 120/175 correct, it is 68%. But 120/190 correct is 63%.

In short, no clue. I'm hoping that the scaling balances out any disadvantage.

[judysmith]

ANy idea what percentage i need to be in in BarBri to be ok?

They usually tell you for each test, but I think it is generally between 56% and 61% is where you are shooting at for each exam.

So is adaptibar significantly easier than barbri?

Yup.

You're saying Adaptibar is significantly easier than Barbri, however Adaptibar uses actual NBCE questions right? So if you are scoring in the 70% range on Adaptibar I have been told past exam passers/Adaptibar users that that is a better indicator of how you will perform test day than other sources. I have also been told that besides the Civ Pro questions which are simulated, the MBE questions on exam day look most like Adaptibar's questions, which would make sense since they are all sourced from the NCBE.

[YalteseFalcon]

Please also note the pre-2013 scales were based on 200 questions - whether the scale is looser or tighter based on the currently graded 190 questions, I don't know. This article on the LSAT seems to suggest a test with fewer questions has a tighter (or smaller) scale. However, the scale for the February and July 2013 New York MBEs (the only NY exams to release raw scores based on 190 graded MBE questions) had very loose scales compared to other February/July administrations based on 200 MBE questions. Accordingly, the estimated scale may be somewhat different, but I don't know how different, or in which direction.

If you haven't seen this MBE scale calculator/estimator, it's worth checking out: http://www.seperac.com/zcalc-mbe-febjuly.php. The above text comes from this page, and describes the hop from 200 graded questions to 190. It's funny, because it seems that there's no clear answer to what should be mathematically certain one way or the other.

[squiggle]

In addition to the impact on the curve, I wonder if there will be a psychological impact. Instead of reading 10 questions that are potentially difficult or obscure, we'll be facing 25 experimental questions. We never know for sure if a weird question that tripped us up is scored or experimental, and we never will. I worry that extra 15 questions could take a toll on people mentally, especially if some are grouped semi closely. Hang tough during the exam!

[PunkWonkMike]

I'm not thrilled with being a guinea pig, but I doubt it's going to make much difference. We're all taking the same test next week, so the unless there's something uniquely odd about the Feb 2017 group of test-takers, I don't think it's going to make a huge difference with scores.

[cnk1220]

Here's my two cents the more I thought about it:

It may not make a difference but the whole experimental Qs on standardized tests is stupid, in the context of every exam-- LSAT, MPRE, you name it.

Every Q should count. In all honesty, why should I have to waste my brain energy on a Q that DOESN'T EVEN HELP ME if I get it right? And better yet-- like somewhat said above^^ what about the panic mode it's going to send people into when we now start seeing 25 stupid vaguely worded Qs as opposed to 10 that we were expecting.

No matter what the scaling is though- take this: NCBE can't account for someone who gets all 25 of those pretest Qs wrong and will not be hurt in their score-- but if someone gets all 25 of those pretest Qs right by luck (which could theoretically happen)- and 25 wrong that DID COUNT AND WERE NOT PRETEST- they would obviously be hurt in their score and no amount of "scaling" would adjust for that because clearly a higher raw score = higher scaled score. How is this fair? It's not...

If the NCBE wants to pre-test Qs they can easily ask currently barred attorneys to volunteer their time for CLE credits or pay them to take exams to see how many people get this Q right to determine if it's a "good future Q to use on the bar exam." I didn't sign up to be NCBE's little guinea pig because they're curious on testing out new Qs...*sigh*

It seems drastically unfair to take this gamble on people who 1) need this multiple choice exam for entry into the legal field and 2) are inevitably already nervous walking into the exam that determines whether you can practice in this field you dedicated the last 3 years of your life to.

--End Rant--

[Sonny1211]

Here's my two cents the more I thought about it:

It may not make a difference but the whole experimental Qs on standardized tests is stupid, in the context of every exam-- LSAT, MPRE, you name it.

Every Q should count. In all honesty, why should I have to waste my brain energy on a Q that DOESN'T EVEN HELP ME if I get it right? And better yet-- like somewhat said above^^ what about the panic mode it's going to send people into when we now start seeing 25 stupid vaguely worded Qs as opposed to 10 that we were expecting.

No matter what the scaling is though- take this: NCBE can't account for someone who gets all 25 of those pretest Qs wrong and will not be hurt in their score-- but if someone gets all 25 of those pretest Qs right by luck (which could theoretically happen)- and 25 wrong that DID COUNT AND WERE NOT PRETEST- they would obviously be hurt in their score and no amount of "scaling" would adjust for that because clearly a higher raw score = higher scaled score. How is this fair? It's not...

If the NCBE wants to pre-test Qs they can easily ask currently barred attorneys to volunteer their time for CLE credits or pay them to take exams to see how many people get this Q right to determine if it's a "good future Q to use on the bar exam." I didn't sign up to be NCBE's little guinea pig because they're curious on testing out new Qs...*sigh*

It seems drastically unfair to take this gamble on people who 1) need this multiple choice exam for entry into the legal field and 2) are inevitably already nervous walking into the exam that determines whether you can practice in this field you dedicated the last 3 years of your life to.

--End Rant--

I agree with you its nonsense

We have to treat every question equally and not spend too much time on any one question since it may be a BS question.

[happyhour1122]

We just gonna have to remind ourselves not to spend too much time on questions that are surprising and are basesd on strictly "you can only answer by knowing the rule" questions. I'm worried that they will add alot of strange 25 experimental questions that will throw me off....

[ConfusedL1]

What's the likelihood we'll see a greater scaled score bump?

[maxmartin]

What's the likelihood we'll see a greater scaled score bump?

More likely a dip, lol scored 158 under 190, only managed 149 under 175. But 149 was taken in Feb, some people say Feb score are always scored a few points lower than July score.