MBE February 2018 Reactions.. Forum

[ndbigdave]

In the hopes of having people feel at least a "bit" better - I have passed in both Michigan and Illinois and I can safely say that I had a similar reaction...

I could say that I "knew" maybe 10-20 questions...out of 200. Nearly the entire test fell under the category of "educated guess" where I could eliminate a choice or two, and be left picking what I thought was the best of the other two.

I ended up passing with an "ok" not "great" score in each jurisidction (141) - but it also goes to show that you can pass (perhaps even comfortably) while feeling like crap today. Its just the nature of the test, there are very few brightline, for-sure answers so you are left with a feeling of doubt and uncertainty - welcome to the club.

Go get a drink...or whatever it is you do. Its over, enjoy a break and we can all reasses this in a month or two when results come out.

I hope so. Definitely have been having moments of intense paranoia these past few days. I have been going through my essays in my head (and on this board) thinking that I think I adequately answered most of them with the time and character limits given but MBEs have always been a weak point so my plan was to specifically address those but now my worry is if I did enough. I missed by 7 points so technically I was not far off but I was never quite in the safe space of scoring - BarBri consistently placed me at 60-ish and Adaptibar generally did the same so I was looking at two sets of sources for practice tests with both placing me at 120/200 on a good day meaning hitting 130-140 was possible. So I pulled out my specific weak areas and just drilled and reviewed those but the actual test definitely psyches you out and the big difference between this attempt and the first is that I recall so many questions that seemed either particularly easy because I knew them or tough because of educated guesses. I would have PMed you rather than writing another novel but figure this might help others and TLS has been like a chronicle of my entire law journey.

If you were comfortably scoring 120/200 (with times significantly higher) I would think you would be scoring near the national average or higher. A relatively "average" score hovering around 140. Granted, I dont know what your essay score was, or will be (essays are the high variance section of the test) but if you can score around that 140 it means you "bought yourself points" and can score a decent chunk below the necessary 133.

It sounds like you are feeling ok with the essays which would lead me to believe youre sitting pretty. The toughest part is the wait for sure, but there is literally nothing you can do now other than try and be distracted. Go on a vacation and stay busy with other things. Fortunately, Illinois gets results back sooner than many other jurisdiction.

[RCinDNA]

In the hopes of having people feel at least a "bit" better - I have passed in both Michigan and Illinois and I can safely say that I had a similar reaction...

I could say that I "knew" maybe 10-20 questions...out of 200. Nearly the entire test fell under the category of "educated guess" where I could eliminate a choice or two, and be left picking what I thought was the best of the other two.

I ended up passing with an "ok" not "great" score in each jurisidction (141) - but it also goes to show that you can pass (perhaps even comfortably) while feeling like crap today. Its just the nature of the test, there are very few brightline, for-sure answers so you are left with a feeling of doubt and uncertainty - welcome to the club.

Go get a drink...or whatever it is you do. Its over, enjoy a break and we can all reasses this in a month or two when results come out.

I hope so. Definitely have been having moments of intense paranoia these past few days. I have been going through my essays in my head (and on this board) thinking that I think I adequately answered most of them with the time and character limits given but MBEs have always been a weak point so my plan was to specifically address those but now my worry is if I did enough. I missed by 7 points so technically I was not far off but I was never quite in the safe space of scoring - BarBri consistently placed me at 60-ish and Adaptibar generally did the same so I was looking at two sets of sources for practice tests with both placing me at 120/200 on a good day meaning hitting 130-140 was possible. So I pulled out my specific weak areas and just drilled and reviewed those but the actual test definitely psyches you out and the big difference between this attempt and the first is that I recall so many questions that seemed either particularly easy because I knew them or tough because of educated guesses. I would have PMed you rather than writing another novel but figure this might help others and TLS has been like a chronicle of my entire law journey.

If you were comfortably scoring 120/200 (with times significantly higher) I would think you would be scoring near the national average or higher. A relatively "average" score hovering around 140. Granted, I dont know what your essay score was, or will be (essays are the high variance section of the test) but if you can score around that 140 it means you "bought yourself points" and can score a decent chunk below the necessary 133.

It sounds like you are feeling ok with the essays which would lead me to believe youre sitting pretty. The toughest part is the wait for sure, but there is literally nothing you can do now other than try and be distracted. Go on a vacation and stay busy with other things. Fortunately, Illinois gets results back sooner than many other jurisdiction.

Will try not to go crazy but the two factors I keep in mind were that 1) I flubbed the one essay - wrote coherently but grade variance can take that from a 2 or 3 to a 1 and 2) I ran out of time on both sections of the MBE getting to the last five or six (did make educated guesses so no blanks). The latter concerns me the most because I need to get as many points there as possible. Pushing that MBE just went hand-in-hand with the review and maintenance process in the final days so I don’t have a final practice MBE set to definitively say “OK - I have broken 135 raw” going into the test - just knowledge pf how much material I had covered.

[ndbigdave]

In the hopes of having people feel at least a "bit" better - I have passed in both Michigan and Illinois and I can safely say that I had a similar reaction...

I could say that I "knew" maybe 10-20 questions...out of 200. Nearly the entire test fell under the category of "educated guess" where I could eliminate a choice or two, and be left picking what I thought was the best of the other two.

I ended up passing with an "ok" not "great" score in each jurisidction (141) - but it also goes to show that you can pass (perhaps even comfortably) while feeling like crap today. Its just the nature of the test, there are very few brightline, for-sure answers so you are left with a feeling of doubt and uncertainty - welcome to the club.

Go get a drink...or whatever it is you do. Its over, enjoy a break and we can all reasses this in a month or two when results come out.

I hope so. Definitely have been having moments of intense paranoia these past few days. I have been going through my essays in my head (and on this board) thinking that I think I adequately answered most of them with the time and character limits given but MBEs have always been a weak point so my plan was to specifically address those but now my worry is if I did enough. I missed by 7 points so technically I was not far off but I was never quite in the safe space of scoring - BarBri consistently placed me at 60-ish and Adaptibar generally did the same so I was looking at two sets of sources for practice tests with both placing me at 120/200 on a good day meaning hitting 130-140 was possible. So I pulled out my specific weak areas and just drilled and reviewed those but the actual test definitely psyches you out and the big difference between this attempt and the first is that I recall so many questions that seemed either particularly easy because I knew them or tough because of educated guesses. I would have PMed you rather than writing another novel but figure this might help others and TLS has been like a chronicle of my entire law journey.

If you were comfortably scoring 120/200 (with times significantly higher) I would think you would be scoring near the national average or higher. A relatively "average" score hovering around 140. Granted, I dont know what your essay score was, or will be (essays are the high variance section of the test) but if you can score around that 140 it means you "bought yourself points" and can score a decent chunk below the necessary 133.

It sounds like you are feeling ok with the essays which would lead me to believe youre sitting pretty. The toughest part is the wait for sure, but there is literally nothing you can do now other than try and be distracted. Go on a vacation and stay busy with other things. Fortunately, Illinois gets results back sooner than many other jurisdiction.

Will try not to go crazy but the two factors I keep in mind were that 1) I flubbed the one essay - wrote coherently but grade variance can take that from a 2 or 3 to a 1 and 2) I ran out of time on both sections of the MBE getting to the last five or six (did make educated guesses so no blanks). The latter concerns me the most because I need to get as many points there as possible. Pushing that MBE just went hand-in-hand with the review and maintenance process in the final days so I don’t have a final practice MBE set to definitively say “OK - I have broken 135 raw” going into the test - just knowledge pf how much material I had covered.

Were you using Adaptibar? If you did all/most of the program it is safe to say you should know your accumulative and most recent 350 (or so) question average. I would have every reason to believe you would have scored near to that average (what swings it usually is performance on the "hard" questions and the % you had that related to "guessing"). If you were around 60% (or 120/200) that would put you "near" that national average of about 140. Having to rush certainly doesnt help.

You can definitely afford to bomb an essay (or even more) - the average through the years is just over a 3 (with some that can dip a bit just below) if you happen to have a "good" essay or two you can balance out your bad ones - and that is to keep around average which isnt entirely necessary if your MBE is at/near/above the average.

[b290]

In the hopes of having people feel at least a "bit" better - I have passed in both Michigan and Illinois and I can safely say that I had a similar reaction...

I could say that I "knew" maybe 10-20 questions...out of 200. Nearly the entire test fell under the category of "educated guess" where I could eliminate a choice or two, and be left picking what I thought was the best of the other two.

I ended up passing with an "ok" not "great" score in each jurisidction (141) - but it also goes to show that you can pass (perhaps even comfortably) while feeling like crap today. Its just the nature of the test, there are very few brightline, for-sure answers so you are left with a feeling of doubt and uncertainty - welcome to the club.

Go get a drink...or whatever it is you do. Its over, enjoy a break and we can all reasses this in a month or two when results come out.

I hope so. Definitely have been having moments of intense paranoia these past few days. I have been going through my essays in my head (and on this board) thinking that I think I adequately answered most of them with the time and character limits given but MBEs have always been a weak point so my plan was to specifically address those but now my worry is if I did enough. I missed by 7 points so technically I was not far off but I was never quite in the safe space of scoring - BarBri consistently placed me at 60-ish and Adaptibar generally did the same so I was looking at two sets of sources for practice tests with both placing me at 120/200 on a good day meaning hitting 130-140 was possible. So I pulled out my specific weak areas and just drilled and reviewed those but the actual test definitely psyches you out and the big difference between this attempt and the first is that I recall so many questions that seemed either particularly easy because I knew them or tough because of educated guesses. I would have PMed you rather than writing another novel but figure this might help others and TLS has been like a chronicle of my entire law journey.

If you were comfortably scoring 120/200 (with times significantly higher) I would think you would be scoring near the national average or higher. A relatively "average" score hovering around 140. Granted, I dont know what your essay score was, or will be (essays are the high variance section of the test) but if you can score around that 140 it means you "bought yourself points" and can score a decent chunk below the necessary 133.

It sounds like you are feeling ok with the essays which would lead me to believe youre sitting pretty. The toughest part is the wait for sure, but there is literally nothing you can do now other than try and be distracted. Go on a vacation and stay busy with other things. Fortunately, Illinois gets results back sooner than many other jurisdiction.

Will try not to go crazy but the two factors I keep in mind were that 1) I flubbed the one essay - wrote coherently but grade variance can take that from a 2 or 3 to a 1 and 2) I ran out of time on both sections of the MBE getting to the last five or six (did make educated guesses so no blanks). The latter concerns me the most because I need to get as many points there as possible. Pushing that MBE just went hand-in-hand with the review and maintenance process in the final days so I don’t have a final practice MBE set to definitively say “OK - I have broken 135 raw” going into the test - just knowledge pf how much material I had covered.

I think I have the reverse problem, I feel good about the MBE and uneasy about the essays.

Also, I think I posted something yesterday, but it wasn't approved. I'm ok with it, just send me a reason why.

My $.02

[ecafracs]

I feel uneasy with the MBE, but I feel worse about the essays. I was completely off for one question, and I mis-wrote the black letter law for another.

I didn't do a single practice essay because I felt it was more important to study and learn the actual law. Maybe that was a mistake.

[b290]

I feel uneasy with the MBE, but I feel worse about the essays. I was completely off for one question, and I mis-wrote the black letter law for another.

I didn't do a single practice essay because I felt it was more important to study and learn the actual law. Maybe that was a mistake.

The only reason why I did practice essays was for structure. That was my biggest problem from the beginning. That's why I typed it: copy and paste, change content, repeat.

Note, 30 mins isn't enough time to write anything worth it's salt. Keep in mind that you only have 30 minutes to read, organize, and write (at least with your MPTs, you have 90 mins. This is while you're coming back from lunch, so even if you're energized @ Essay 1, you'll likely be running on fumes by Essay 6. Also, by the time the grader gets your essay, they've graded hundreds, if not thousands, of others. Take all that into account, and you'll see why people get points for misstated law, and other stuff.

If you know your law, that should reflect on the MBE anyway. It's not like it went to waste. In short, don't be so hard on yourself.

My $.02

[ScurryRay]

Anybody else fighting a cold during the exam?

I haven't been sick throughout all of law school and then lo and behold, the day before the exam, I come down with a cold. I pounded Airborne, zinc and orange juice to the point of overdose, trying to suppress it. I even went to a pharmacy near the hotel and asked the pharmacist for any magic elixir. He was unsympathetic to say the least. Spent the majority of Day One focusing on keeping snot from running out of my nose. By about an hour and a half in, the four Kleenex I had brought were crumbled, torn and falling to pieces. Then I sat there and was doing mental calculations whether the relief I may get with a walk to the bathroom (about 5 minutes since I was in the furthest possible place) had more probative value than the prejudicial effect of the time I would lose on my question.

Completely miserable. You study your ass off and then get a cold the day before the exam. Life is not fair.

[RCinDNA]

In the hopes of having people feel at least a "bit" better - I have passed in both Michigan and Illinois and I can safely say that I had a similar reaction...

I could say that I "knew" maybe 10-20 questions...out of 200. Nearly the entire test fell under the category of "educated guess" where I could eliminate a choice or two, and be left picking what I thought was the best of the other two.

I ended up passing with an "ok" not "great" score in each jurisidction (141) - but it also goes to show that you can pass (perhaps even comfortably) while feeling like crap today. Its just the nature of the test, there are very few brightline, for-sure answers so you are left with a feeling of doubt and uncertainty - welcome to the club.

Go get a drink...or whatever it is you do. Its over, enjoy a break and we can all reasses this in a month or two when results come out.

I hope so. Definitely have been having moments of intense paranoia these past few days. I have been going through my essays in my head (and on this board) thinking that I think I adequately answered most of them with the time and character limits given but MBEs have always been a weak point so my plan was to specifically address those but now my worry is if I did enough. I missed by 7 points so technically I was not far off but I was never quite in the safe space of scoring - BarBri consistently placed me at 60-ish and Adaptibar generally did the same so I was looking at two sets of sources for practice tests with both placing me at 120/200 on a good day meaning hitting 130-140 was possible. So I pulled out my specific weak areas and just drilled and reviewed those but the actual test definitely psyches you out and the big difference between this attempt and the first is that I recall so many questions that seemed either particularly easy because I knew them or tough because of educated guesses. I would have PMed you rather than writing another novel but figure this might help others and TLS has been like a chronicle of my entire law journey.

If you were comfortably scoring 120/200 (with times significantly higher) I would think you would be scoring near the national average or higher. A relatively "average" score hovering around 140. Granted, I dont know what your essay score was, or will be (essays are the high variance section of the test) but if you can score around that 140 it means you "bought yourself points" and can score a decent chunk below the necessary 133.

It sounds like you are feeling ok with the essays which would lead me to believe youre sitting pretty. The toughest part is the wait for sure, but there is literally nothing you can do now other than try and be distracted. Go on a vacation and stay busy with other things. Fortunately, Illinois gets results back sooner than many other jurisdiction.

Will try not to go crazy but the two factors I keep in mind were that 1) I flubbed the one essay - wrote coherently but grade variance can take that from a 2 or 3 to a 1 and 2) I ran out of time on both sections of the MBE getting to the last five or six (did make educated guesses so no blanks). The latter concerns me the most because I need to get as many points there as possible. Pushing that MBE just went hand-in-hand with the review and maintenance process in the final days so I don’t have a final practice MBE set to definitively say “OK - I have broken 135 raw” going into the test - just knowledge pf how much material I had covered.

Were you using Adaptibar? If you did all/most of the program it is safe to say you should know your accumulative and most recent 350 (or so) question average. I would have every reason to believe you would have scored near to that average (what swings it usually is performance on the "hard" questions and the % you had that related to "guessing"). If you were around 60% (or 120/200) that would put you "near" that national average of about 140. Having to rush certainly doesnt help.

You can definitely afford to bomb an essay (or even more) - the average through the years is just over a 3 (with some that can dip a bit just below) if you happen to have a "good" essay or two you can balance out your bad ones - and that is to keep around average which isnt entirely necessary if your MBE is at/near/above the average.

Yeah. I guess there is no real security since the fact that 175 questions are counted and not 200 actually throws off most practice sets unless we knock off 25 responses to show the worst case scenario.

[RCinDNA]

Anybody else fighting a cold during the exam?

I haven't been sick throughout all of law school and then lo and behold, the day before the exam, I come down with a cold. I pounded Airborne, zinc and orange juice to the point of overdose, trying to suppress it. I even went to a pharmacy near the hotel and asked the pharmacist for any magic elixir. He was unsympathetic to say the least. Spent the majority of Day One focusing on keeping snot from running out of my nose. By about an hour and a half in, the four Kleenex I had brought were crumbled, torn and falling to pieces. Then I sat there and was doing mental calculations whether the relief I may get with a walk to the bathroom (about 5 minutes since I was in the furthest possible place) had more probative value than the prejudicial effect of the time I would lose on my question.

Completely miserable. You study your ass off and then get a cold the day before the exam. Life is not fair.

No, but I am now fighting bronchitis a week afterwards. Possibly from a sick person who sat next to me during the exam. Glad I did not have it during, though - must have been miserable.

[Derek Vinyard]

Heres some horrible news for those who fail and have to take the exam the next time around. Adaptibar just released an additional 200 questions reflecting some of the new Civ Pro questions. This means there is even more information out there that we need to read and memorize for next time. Adaptibar says its good news, although I disagree . Maybe they will release some of those 4 paragraph long questions to slow down everyone's preparation. They get their questions directly from NCBE, so obviously NCBE approves and consents to all of the questions released on there.

[b290]

Heres some horrible news for those who fail and have to take the exam the next time around. Adaptibar just released an additional 200 questions reflecting some of the new Civ Pro questions. This means there is even more information out there that we need to read and memorize for next time. Adaptibar says its good news, although I disagree . Maybe they will release some of those 4 paragraph long questions to slow down everyone's preparation. They get their questions directly from NCBE, so obviously NCBE approves and consents to all of the questions released on there.

Yeah, but wouldn't those be the first released Civ Pro questions from the NCBE? Until then everybody made their own up, which is why numbers for Civ Pro were considerably lower than the other subjects - no matter what bar prep you used. Having some actual questions, would seem to be a good thing.

Here's to not having to study for it again though.

My $.02

[IwiLLdoIt]

Morning session was more difficult than the afternoon one. Overall, I found MBE difficult this time. I don’t recall what was my impression after July’17.

yeah i found the AM questions to be harder than the evening MBE questions

[IwiLLdoIt]

THAT WAS INSANE!!! I did ALOT of practice questiond and struggled on almost every AM question... some
of them I really just had no idea what they were testing...I felt the PM test reflected accurately my practice tests but what the hell was up with the AM!?! It felt like I was taking a competely different test than the MBE....

I agree, the AM mbe was more difficult to discern what question of law they were asking..smh

[IwiLLdoIt]

Property/Contract land sale questions seemed different.....How did the Con law questions treat you guys? I can't seem to recall most of them.

Land sale contracts are always weird. You have the contract element and the deed element and neither work together coherently. The contract could be totally messed up but delivery and acceptance could mean the land was delivered while the deed can have all sprts of issues but the seller could escape liability because of the closing.

True. Even if it's a general warranty deed, and the seller delivered unmarketable title, once the deal is done the buyer is limited to damages, and can no longer rescind. But in certain cases, the buyer is obligated to not rescind, and the seller can cure the defects (by paying off a mortgage) after the sale. So weird.

I feel like land sale contracts on the MBE are kind of like that stereotypical swindling-hustler that you see in old 90's movies. You know, the one who rips the guys money off by doing the cups trick... which of the three cups is the ball under?

It's always something like: A devises to her son B, but B never records. B gets a mortgage on the land, and mortgagee does record. In the meantime, A sells to a purchaser who we will call C. At the same time, B gets tired of the upkeep and sells the property to D, who mortgages through Mortgagee 2 (M2). M2 contains a valid acceleration, due on notice, clause. D then gifts the property to E, but does not assign the mortgage. D defaults on his mortgage, and M2 then initiates foreclosure proceedings.

Who has a valid claim on the land... in other words... which Goddamned cup is the ball under?! (damn you to hell for this question swindling-huster!)

Im dead....lmfao

[IwiLLdoIt]

there should be a computer outside the room so they can process the answer sheets and give you your raw score in a day or two. I would pay extra for that. The waiting is killing me.

I second that, I too would pay extra for that.

[Jdsquared87]

Seriously felt like I got hit by a train after the mbe. AM session was disturbing though I feel like I caught my stride in the PM session. Nearly a month later and I'm anxiety ridden, praying that I don't have to go through that mess again.

[Jdsquared87]

Re: MPT
Did anyone want to strangle that annoying MUD woman?

Yes, just yes.

[RCinDNA]

Seriously felt like I got hit by a train after the mbe. AM session was disturbing though I feel like I caught my stride in the PM session. Nearly a month later and I'm anxiety ridden, praying that I don't have to go through that mess again.

Same. I keep having flashbacks to random questions.

[RCinDNA]

Heres some horrible news for those who fail and have to take the exam the next time around. Adaptibar just released an additional 200 questions reflecting some of the new Civ Pro questions. This means there is even more information out there that we need to read and memorize for next time. Adaptibar says its good news, although I disagree . Maybe they will release some of those 4 paragraph long questions to slow down everyone's preparation. They get their questions directly from NCBE, so obviously NCBE approves and consents to all of the questions released on there.

If the four paragraph long questions are among the released ones, does that mean they were not experimental?

*ponders*

[Jdsquared87]

Seriously felt like I got hit by a train after the mbe. AM session was disturbing though I feel like I caught my stride in the PM session. Nearly a month later and I'm anxiety ridden, praying that I don't have to go through that mess again.

Same. I keep having flashbacks to random questions.

The nightmares!!! I had a dream 2 nights ago that my torts professor was laughing whilst advising me that I failed the exam. I woke up in a cold sweat. Lol

[L_William_W]

1) Adaptibar is shit

2) I got a 149.3 MBE (albeit, on the 6th time I took the bar exam- three in NJ, three in NY. I passed each on the 3rd attempt). I finished at the bottom of my class and nearly got academically dismissed. I struggled through civ pro, though torts and con law were a breeze. The bar exam is curved. Unless you completely froze and fucked up, you'll be fine.

[dreamofNYC]

1) Adaptibar is shit

2) I got a 149.3 MBE (albeit, on the 6th time I took the bar exam- three in NJ, three in NY. I passed each on the 3rd attempt). I finished at the bottom of my class and nearly got academically dismissed. I struggled through civ pro, though torts and con law were a breeze. The bar exam is curved. Unless you completely froze and fucked up, you'll be fine.

Thank you so much for sharing the hope! I thought so too.

[b290]

1) Adaptibar is shit

2) I got a 149.3 MBE (albeit, on the 6th time I took the bar exam- three in NJ, three in NY. I passed each on the 3rd attempt). I finished at the bottom of my class and nearly got academically dismissed. I struggled through civ pro, though torts and con law were a breeze. The bar exam is curved. Unless you completely froze and fucked up, you'll be fine.

Same. 142.7

[Jess3184]

Anybody else fighting a cold during the exam?

I haven't been sick throughout all of law school and then lo and behold, the day before the exam, I come down with a cold. I pounded Airborne, zinc and orange juice to the point of overdose, trying to suppress it. I even went to a pharmacy near the hotel and asked the pharmacist for any magic elixir. He was unsympathetic to say the least. Spent the majority of Day One focusing on keeping snot from running out of my nose. By about an hour and a half in, the four Kleenex I had brought were crumbled, torn and falling to pieces. Then I sat there and was doing mental calculations whether the relief I may get with a walk to the bathroom (about 5 minutes since I was in the furthest possible place) had more probative value than the prejudicial effect of the time I would lose on my question.

Completely miserable. You study your ass off and then get a cold the day before the exam. Life is not fair.

No, but I am now fighting bronchitis a week afterwards. Possibly from a sick person who sat next to me during the exam. Glad I did not have it during, though - must have been miserable.

You were not alone. I woke up Friday night before the exam with a terrible sore throat that only got worse. I lost valuable review time Saturday and Sunday and had to drive to Houston on Monday for the exam. The worst.

[Jdsquared87]

1) Adaptibar is shit

2) I got a 149.3 MBE (albeit, on the 6th time I took the bar exam- three in NJ, three in NY. I passed each on the 3rd attempt). I finished at the bottom of my class and nearly got academically dismissed. I struggled through civ pro, though torts and con law were a breeze. The bar exam is curved. Unless you completely froze and fucked up, you'll be fine.

I really hope so. I feel really good about the MPT and 'okay about the MBE. However, my essay confidence is lacking. I think I did well enough on 3 or 4 of the essays but began to run out of time on the last question, bullshitted a rule for 1 subquestion on it, and didn't completely finish my analysis for the very last subquestio though I got the bare bones (issue, somewhat analyzed and conclusion). So I think for sure I bombed 1 essay.

I don't know how to feel about what I did. Some days I feel great but for the majority I feel like I failed. This waiting is miserable.