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I seriously think I bombed the essays (CA). I hope my MBE will save me though since this year the MBE is worth 50% in CA. Can anyone else who took Adaptibar post your results, thoughts? I feel that this years MBE had a significant number of questions that were unlike those on Adaptibar. Perhaps 40%??

how did you get around to doing 2800 problems?? how many did you do per day?

my stats:
percentage: 65.2%
problems: 1000

i felt some mbe problems were similar to adaptibar but not as much as i would have expected.

sgd19 wrote:how did you get around to doing 2800 problems?? how many did you do per day?

my stats:
percentage: 65.2%
problems: 1000

i felt some mbe problems were similar to adaptibar but not as much as i would have expected.

I stared on June 1 and did between 50-80 questions per day straight until the night before the MBE. I missed a couple of days in June though when I got depressed lol. But other than that, it was at least 50 questions per day.

I believe the MBE licenses questions that have fact patterns that are right about to get retired. There are a number of formulaic questions on Adaptibar that are not on the current MBE test especially concerning property and crim law IMHO.

6TimeFailure wrote:

sgd19 wrote:how did you get around to doing 2800 problems?? how many did you do per day?

my stats:
percentage: 65.2%
problems: 1000

i felt some mbe problems were similar to adaptibar but not as much as i would have expected.

I stared on June 1 and did between 50-80 questions per day straight until the night before the MBE. I missed a couple of days in June though when I got depressed lol. But other than that, it was at least 50 questions per day.

I believe the MBE licenses questions that have fact patterns that are right about to get retired. There are a number of formulaic questions on Adaptibar that are not on the current MBE test especially concerning property and crim law IMHO.

Hey, so I really hope you get over the hump this time as I know the MBE was your strength. However, what is the use of working so diligently on this if you're going to struggle with the essays? Did you work as hard on the essay portion this time around? Hopefully it will be irrelevant come november.

LockBox wrote:

6TimeFailure wrote:

sgd19 wrote:how did you get around to doing 2800 problems?? how many did you do per day?

my stats:
percentage: 65.2%
problems: 1000

i felt some mbe problems were similar to adaptibar but not as much as i would have expected.

I stared on June 1 and did between 50-80 questions per day straight until the night before the MBE. I missed a couple of days in June though when I got depressed lol. But other than that, it was at least 50 questions per day.

I believe the MBE licenses questions that have fact patterns that are right about to get retired. There are a number of formulaic questions on Adaptibar that are not on the current MBE test especially concerning property and crim law IMHO.

Hey, so I really hope you get over the hump this time as I know the MBE was your strength. However, what is the use of working so diligently on this if you're going to struggle with the essays? Did you work as hard on the essay portion this time around? Hopefully it will be irrelevant come november.

I came to the conclusion that I simply blank out on essays. I can't completely remember the damn rules. I wrote them over and over again hundreds of times. Simply give me a the first few words and I can ruin with it. But I don't recognize the triggers within the question to spark a memory of the complete rule in my god damn brain. But I did still concentrate on the essay portion of my bar prep this time. Hopefully it all works out.

6TimeFailure wrote:

LockBox wrote:

6TimeFailure wrote:

sgd19 wrote:how did you get around to doing 2800 problems?? how many did you do per day?

my stats:
percentage: 65.2%
problems: 1000

i felt some mbe problems were similar to adaptibar but not as much as i would have expected.

I stared on June 1 and did between 50-80 questions per day straight until the night before the MBE. I missed a couple of days in June though when I got depressed lol. But other than that, it was at least 50 questions per day.

I believe the MBE licenses questions that have fact patterns that are right about to get retired. There are a number of formulaic questions on Adaptibar that are not on the current MBE test especially concerning property and crim law IMHO.

Hey, so I really hope you get over the hump this time as I know the MBE was your strength. However, what is the use of working so diligently on this if you're going to struggle with the essays? Did you work as hard on the essay portion this time around? Hopefully it will be irrelevant come november.

I came to the conclusion that I simply blank out on essays. I can't completely remember the damn rules. I wrote them over and over again hundreds of times. Simply give me a the first few words and I can ruin with it. But I don't recognize the triggers within the question to spark a memory of the complete rule in my god damn brain. But I did still concentrate on the essay portion of my bar prep this time. Hopefully it all works out.

Ya, well I can relate somewhat as I failed due to essays as well. Though once I wrote 2 essays/day for 10 weeks, things started to click and I couldn't help but autopilot my way to a pass.

Have you tried speaking the essays? Maybe you'll remember how to go about writing a model answer by saying them over and over. Again though, hopefully this will all be unnecessary.

LockBox wrote:

6TimeFailure wrote:

LockBox wrote:

6TimeFailure wrote:

sgd19 wrote:how did you get around to doing 2800 problems?? how many did you do per day?

my stats:
percentage: 65.2%
problems: 1000

i felt some mbe problems were similar to adaptibar but not as much as i would have expected.

I stared on June 1 and did between 50-80 questions per day straight until the night before the MBE. I missed a couple of days in June though when I got depressed lol. But other than that, it was at least 50 questions per day.

I believe the MBE licenses questions that have fact patterns that are right about to get retired. There are a number of formulaic questions on Adaptibar that are not on the current MBE test especially concerning property and crim law IMHO.

Hey, so I really hope you get over the hump this time as I know the MBE was your strength. However, what is the use of working so diligently on this if you're going to struggle with the essays? Did you work as hard on the essay portion this time around? Hopefully it will be irrelevant come november.

I came to the conclusion that I simply blank out on essays. I can't completely remember the damn rules. I wrote them over and over again hundreds of times. Simply give me a the first few words and I can ruin with it. But I don't recognize the triggers within the question to spark a memory of the complete rule in my god damn brain. But I did still concentrate on the essay portion of my bar prep this time. Hopefully it all works out.

Ya, well I can relate somewhat as I failed due to essays as well. Though once I wrote 2 essays/day for 10 weeks, things started to click and I couldn't help but autopilot my way to a pass.

Have you tried speaking the essays? Maybe you'll remember how to go about writing a model answer by saying them over and over. Again though, hopefully this will all be unnecessary.

how did you approach the practice essays? did you attempt to write your own essay and then compare it to the model answer or work backwards from the model answer and see how everything was constructed? blanking on essays is a problem i have too and that was my weakest area. all i can do is hope that mbe and state multiple choice carry me through

My Stats:

Total questions -- 1000
Total percentage -- 73.1%

Total Completed: 1240
Overall %: 63.8

My first 350 were done with 50 a day at a score of 60%

My second 350 jumped up to 65.1%

I started fast, but then definitely took time off and missed days, finished out strong, the last 7 days before the test I did 130 questions with a 70% and my last 300 questions or so were around 67%

My subject breakdown were:
Civ Pro: 53%
Con Law: 70%
Contracts: 63%
Crim Law: 71%
Evidence: 67%
Real Property: 61%
Torts: 60%

My Civ Pro scores improved a decent amount, but was drastically my worst subject.

My hope is that these scores were at least fairly accurate and that the Civ Pro is an outlier that will get closer to my other scores.

Generally speaking I was happy with Adaptibar, I did felt reasonably prepared and felt the question tone, style, format were very similar. I would say on average that this year's MBE felt harder than my usual set, but I obviously cant say until I get the results.

I have taken two MBEs thus far scoring a 141 and a 139. After each one of them I had absolutely no idea how well I had done, ironically on my first ever MBE I felt like I rarely "knew" the answer but could elimiate one or two responses. The second attempt was more of the same, this third time I definitely felt like there were more where I absolutely was sure of an answer and could more often eliminate "wrong" choices and be left with the best of the worst.

My previous attempts were fueled primarily by listening to BarMax audio lectures and doing "some" questions and by "some" I mean about 180 the first attempt and then a mix of BarMax questions and some BarBri questions (not sure how many but perhaps 400?) The trick being, I basically never reviewed the questions - I relied on memory and being decisive with answer selecting.

This time I reviewed all but 100 of my 1240, reading the answer explanation for each question - right or wrong/ Not surpsingly, I routinely could remember those I got wrong as it stuck with me.

My hope is to up my MBE score a couple of points, no illusions of 20 point bumps into the super elite, but if I could get into the mid 140s I would consider it a success.

Beyond the hoped improvement I think I learned the MBE subject far more deeply which aided with essary writing.

What is most sad this time around is if I pass (and I do think I will) I will not receive my score from the IL Bar Examiners so that I could report back.

Overall Average: 76.5%

Total Questions Answered: 1460

Purchased Adaptibar pretty late in the game (July 6th) but very happy I did. I found it super helpful.

Will come back and update once scores are released.

Just wanted to bump this thread in case anyone can find some helpful information here. I passed the Summer 2017 exam with my Adaptibar performance listed above....and I know I totally sucked in the essay portion. So if you can score similarly, I think you are in good shape.

FinallyPassedTheBar wrote:Just wanted to bump this thread in case anyone can find some helpful information here. I passed the Summer 2017 exam with my Adaptibar performance listed above....and I know I totally sucked in the essay portion. So if you can score similarly, I think you are in good shape.

Did you also take the exam when MBE score was worth 35%? I am curious to see whether graders are tougher grading essays now since it is only 50% compared to previous years.

hope2018 wrote:

FinallyPassedTheBar wrote:Just wanted to bump this thread in case anyone can find some helpful information here. I passed the Summer 2017 exam with my Adaptibar performance listed above....and I know I totally sucked in the essay portion. So if you can score similarly, I think you are in good shape.

Did you also take the exam when MBE score was worth 35%? I am curious to see whether graders are tougher grading essays now since it is only 50% compared to previous years.

Yes I took the CA bar (and failed) when the MBE was only worth 35%. I got 150 on the MBE in Feb 2016 and still failed. But I got 150+ in July 2017 and finally passed.

Personally, I am happy it went up to 50% weight. But I know it can be tough for test takers who were better at essays than the MBE.