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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?

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.

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)

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!