HELP ME!! Bar exam panic Forum

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BlackMamba2435

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HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by BlackMamba2435 » Sat Jul 07, 2018 8:13 pm

I’m really freaking out right about now. We are about two weeks out from the big test and I do not know the rules! Smh. I scored pretty well on Barbri practice MBE test 151/200, which placed me in the the 90th percentile of Barbri students, but I do not know the rules well enough to obtain a passing score on the essays. It’s crunch time, any last minute advice?

Findedeux

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by Findedeux » Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:42 pm

You don't have to spit out rules verbatim.

If you can describe the rules in your own words that will be fine.

If you can score that well on MBE you do know the rules even if you don't remember them exactly as they might be listed.

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SilvermanBarPrep

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by SilvermanBarPrep » Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:46 pm

Generally, I tell my students that it's even better if they are stating the rules in a way that makes sense to them rather than the exact wording in the outline assuming that it's a correct statement of the rule. If you're stating it exactly as it's in the outline that could mean you don't really understand it; you've merely memorized it. Understand the rules so that you don't have to pull them from memory, and you'll be better able to analyze them. Analysis earns most of the points.

Sean (Silverman Bar Exam Tutoring)

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CLSGumbo

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by CLSGumbo » Sat Jul 07, 2018 11:11 pm

SilvermanBarPrep wrote:Generally, I tell my students that it's even better if they are stating the rules in a way that makes sense to them rather than the exact wording in the outline assuming that it's a correct statement of the rule. If you're stating it exactly as it's in the outline that could mean you don't really understand it; you've merely memorized it. Understand the rules so that you don't have to pull them from memory, and you'll be better able to analyze them. Analysis earns most of the points.

Sean (Silverman Bar Exam Tutoring)
How much does having the rule right matter? I've heard mixed things about how wrong you can be on the law, just as long as you apply the incorrect law property

justanotheruser

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by justanotheruser » Sun Jul 08, 2018 3:27 am

I finally passed the CA bar in Feb 2018.

What changed for me was worrying less about rote memorization and just diving into practice problems/essays as much as possible. The essay rules kind of came to me via osmosis from reviewing. And I retained them better as I worked hard to recall them for essay outlining + issue spotting and then reviewing answers on BarEssays.
BlackMamba2435 wrote:I’m really freaking out right about now. We are about two weeks out from the big test and I do not know the rules! Smh. I scored pretty well on Barbri practice MBE test 151/200, which placed me in the the 90th percentile of Barbri students, but I do not know the rules well enough to obtain a passing score on the essays. It’s crunch time, any last minute advice?

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Loquitur Res

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by Loquitur Res » Sun Jul 08, 2018 9:03 am

BlackMamba2435 wrote:I’m really freaking out right about now. We are about two weeks out from the big test and I do not know the rules! Smh. I scored pretty well on Barbri practice MBE test 151/200, which placed me in the the 90th percentile of Barbri students, but I do not know the rules well enough to obtain a passing score on the essays. It’s crunch time, any last minute advice?
I am in the exact same boat. 158 on the simulated MBE, but have been bombing practice essays. In addition to missing some issues, I have been having trouble quickly organizing and writing my answer in 30 minutes.

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SilvermanBarPrep

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by SilvermanBarPrep » Sun Jul 08, 2018 2:26 pm

CLSGumbo wrote:
SilvermanBarPrep wrote:Generally, I tell my students that it's even better if they are stating the rules in a way that makes sense to them rather than the exact wording in the outline assuming that it's a correct statement of the rule. If you're stating it exactly as it's in the outline that could mean you don't really understand it; you've merely memorized it. Understand the rules so that you don't have to pull them from memory, and you'll be better able to analyze them. Analysis earns most of the points.

Sean (Silverman Bar Exam Tutoring)
How much does having the rule right matter? I've heard mixed things about how wrong you can be on the law, just as long as you apply the incorrect law property
There's is some truth to that. But I think the application becomes more difficult without a correct statement of the rule. It really helps quite a lot to state the correct rule but there is certainly no reason to state it word-for-word as it is written in an outline.

Nightcrawler

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by Nightcrawler » Sun Jul 08, 2018 3:04 pm

Guys, calm down. 151 and 158 out of 200 are respectively 75% and 79%. To get a scaled score of 1440 on the exam you need around 70% of questions correct. It's not a bad score at all, and there are still 2 weeks to practice. Also I was reading somewhere (maybe Joe Seperac's statistics) that most people's real MBE score fall within 5% of their practice scores.

dabigchina

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by dabigchina » Sun Jul 08, 2018 3:37 pm

Nightcrawler wrote:Guys, calm down. 151 and 158 out of 200 are respectively 75% and 79%. To get a scaled score of 1440 on the exam you need around 70% of questions correct. It's not a bad score at all, and there are still 2 weeks to practice. Also I was reading somewhere (maybe Joe Seperac's statistics) that most people's real MBE score fall within 5% of their practice scores.
Yeah 150+ raw is a ridiculously high score. I suspect that someone with that score can easily BS their way to a passing essay score on MBE essay topics.

edit: also suspect OP is fishing for compliments.

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BlackMamba2435

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by BlackMamba2435 » Sun Jul 08, 2018 3:53 pm

Actually that's not the case. I was just trying to wrap my head around the fact on how I was able to do well on the multiples and perform so god awful on the essays. And It seems like I'm not the only one in this position. So maybe this feeling is just normal.

titusandromedus

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by titusandromedus » Sun Jul 08, 2018 3:58 pm

I got a 131 and was honestly nervous until I saw it put me in around the 65-70th percentile. Still not happy and want to get the score up of course, but also, still better than it could have been. If you got in the 150s you did wonderfully, and you know that.

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Calbears123

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by Calbears123 » Sun Jul 08, 2018 4:24 pm

If your 90th percentile on Barbri's practice MBE translates to the real MBE, you'll autopass.

BlackMamba2435

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by BlackMamba2435 » Mon Jul 09, 2018 9:44 am

Is it a good idea to attempt to outline all of the essays that Barbri has provided us in their essay workbook? I feel like my chances of success on the essays will increase if I'm exposed more essays.

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justanotheruser

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by justanotheruser » Tue Jul 10, 2018 3:34 am

BlackMamba2435 wrote:Is it a good idea to attempt to outline all of the essays that Barbri has provided us in their essay workbook? I feel like my chances of success on the essays will increase if I'm exposed more essays.
If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend BarEssays.com

ubebarstudying

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Re: HELP ME!! Bar exam panic

Post by ubebarstudying » Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:59 am

SilvermanBarPrep wrote:Generally, I tell my students that it's even better if they are stating the rules in a way that makes sense to them rather than the exact wording in the outline assuming that it's a correct statement of the rule. If you're stating it exactly as it's in the outline that could mean you don't really understand it; you've merely memorized it. Understand the rules so that you don't have to pull them from memory, and you'll be better able to analyze them. Analysis earns most of the points.

Sean (Silverman Bar Exam Tutoring)
#Agreed!

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