Bar repeater hoping to pass F17 Forum

[Sonny1211]

Hey guys,

I failed the July 2016 bar with a 245. I got a 127 in the MBE, ranged in the lower 50's in my essays and scored in the lower 30's in my MPT's.

This time around I used adaptibar in conjunction with Marino and finished adaptibar with 70%. Practiced about 10 MPt's and wrote 20 or so essays to completion.

I felt ok on test day, more confident about the MBE but still very challenged by it. I only had 15 minutes for my last essay and might have made a factual mistake that threw off my analysis a bit. I was a bit more tactful with the MPT's but finished both while racing with the clock.

The results are coming this week and my anxiety is up the roof, asking GOD to help me reconcile with whatever my verdic may be. Hoping for the best for me and for you all.

What's your retaker story, how did you feel taking the exam and how do you feel now?

[Estecontre]

Hey guys,

I failed the July 2016 bar with a 245. I got a 127 in the MBE, ranged in the lower 50's in my essays and scored in the lower 30's in my MPT's.

This time around I used adaptibar in conjunction with Marino and finished adaptibar with 70%. Practiced about 10 MPt's and wrote 20 or so essays to completion.

I felt ok on test day, more confident about the MBE but still very challenged by it. I only had 15 minutes for my last essay and might have made a factual mistake that threw off my analysis a bit. I was a bit more tactful with the MPT's but finished both while racing with the clock.

The results are coming this week and my anxiety is up the roof, asking GOD to help me reconcile with whatever my verdic may be. Hoping for the best for me and for you all.

What's your retaker story, how did you feel taking the exam and how do you feel now?

Failed the July 2016 Bar with a horrible score, it's so bad that I feel embarrassed even saying it. I got a 120 in the MBE and around 100 on my essays for Texas (I completely didn't answer three whole essays, because I had no idea how to answer them).

This time around I doubted even going because I had missed many study days because I got sick twice to the point where I couldn't focus so instead I just rested in order to recover. I also did less work than the first time and took more days off, this time around I instead tried to memorize the law and just read and re-read my outlines for hours and I would do practice questions with Themis and Adaptibar. Towards the end of my study days leading to the Bar I just did practice questions on Adaptibar, at least 50 but sometimes around 100 or more a day (I only did Adaptibar for about a month after I was getting repeat questions on Themis and was getting questions right because I remembered the answer) and just read outlines. No practice questions for essay or short answer. I figured while it's great to practice essays and short answers, there's no point for me because I have faith in my writing capabilities and you can't write something if you don't know the law or have an idea about the law.

Couple days before leaving to go take the Bar I was so stressed I broke down and didn't want to go. Everything was already paid for and there was no returning at that point. My parents told me to just go and give it my best, that was better than not going at all, and they would be there if I needed to go for a third time. I am really glad I went come the end of day 3. It actually started off pretty bad I mismanaged my time on the MPT and hardly wrote anything (Luckily it's only worth 10 percent in Texas) completely screwed the pooch on that one. MBE is such a toss up that I can't speculate, but all I needed to do was improve by about 15 points which I don't see as difficult, I do have a better feeling about it this time than the last. Essays went a whole lot better I'm glad to say! There was only one essay where I had no idea where to go with and by that time I was so tired that I wrote very little on, but some of the other essays I knew the answer and feel confident in what I wrote. A couple of others ones I got the law a little wrong, but I think I did okay enough to get a decent score. I feel like I can confidently say I answered 4-5 essays really well (right law, right conclusion, right analysis and structure was there); another 4 went good; 3 were meh and 1 that was just off. All-in-all I feel okay, not great, but not bad either. Just a couple more days until I find out.

Anxiety has been okay, a lot better than last time. No nightmares yet and have even had a couple of dreams where I've passed and that deja vu feeling of seeing me passed and doing attorney work, but sadly that's not reality. Fail or pass, I'll take it for what it is, can't do anything about it now but keep on keepin' on.

[Sonny1211]

Hey guys,

I failed the July 2016 bar with a 245. I got a 127 in the MBE, ranged in the lower 50's in my essays and scored in the lower 30's in my MPT's.

This time around I used adaptibar in conjunction with Marino and finished adaptibar with 70%. Practiced about 10 MPt's and wrote 20 or so essays to completion.

I felt ok on test day, more confident about the MBE but still very challenged by it. I only had 15 minutes for my last essay and might have made a factual mistake that threw off my analysis a bit. I was a bit more tactful with the MPT's but finished both while racing with the clock.

The results are coming this week and my anxiety is up the roof, asking GOD to help me reconcile with whatever my verdic may be. Hoping for the best for me and for you all.

What's your retaker story, how did you feel taking the exam and how do you feel now?

Failed the July 2016 Bar with a horrible score, it's so bad that I feel embarrassed even saying it. I got a 120 in the MBE and around 100 on my essays for Texas (I completely didn't answer three whole essays, because I had no idea how to answer them).

This time around I doubted even going because I had missed many study days because I got sick twice to the point where I couldn't focus so instead I just rested in order to recover. I also did less work than the first time and took more days off, this time around I instead tried to memorize the law and just read and re-read my outlines for hours and I would do practice questions with Themis and Adaptibar. Towards the end of my study days leading to the Bar I just did practice questions on Adaptibar, at least 50 but sometimes around 100 or more a day (I only did Adaptibar for about a month after I was getting repeat questions on Themis and was getting questions right because I remembered the answer) and just read outlines. No practice questions for essay or short answer. I figured while it's great to practice essays and short answers, there's no point for me because I have faith in my writing capabilities and you can't write something if you don't know the law or have an idea about the law.

Couple days before leaving to go take the Bar I was so stressed I broke down and didn't want to go. Everything was already paid for and there was no returning at that point. My parents told me to just go and give it my best, that was better than not going at all, and they would be there if I needed to go for a third time. I am really glad I went come the end of day 3. It actually started off pretty bad I mismanaged my time on the MPT and hardly wrote anything (Luckily it's only worth 10 percent in Texas) completely screwed the pooch on that one. MBE is such a toss up that I can't speculate, but all I needed to do was improve by about 15 points which I don't see as difficult, I do have a better feeling about it this time than the last. Essays went a whole lot better I'm glad to say! There was only one essay where I had no idea where to go with and by that time I was so tired that I wrote very little on, but some of the other essays I knew the answer and feel confident in what I wrote. A couple of others ones I got the law a little wrong, but I think I did okay enough to get a decent score. I feel like I can confidently say I answered 4-5 essays really well (right law, right conclusion, right analysis and structure was there); another 4 went good; 3 were meh and 1 that was just off. All-in-all I feel okay, not great, but not bad either. Just a couple more days until I find out.

Anxiety has been okay, a lot better than last time. No nightmares yet and have even had a couple of dreams where I've passed and that deja vu feeling of seeing me passed and doing attorney work, but sadly that's not reality. Fail or pass, I'll take it for what it is, can't do anything about it now but keep on keepin' on.

Sounds like there is some progress to expect in light of how you felt on the essays.

Felt good about the MBE on test day? How were you scoring on adaptibar

[maztastic247]

Hey guys,

I failed the July 2016 bar with a 245. I got a 127 in the MBE, ranged in the lower 50's in my essays and scored in the lower 30's in my MPT's.

This time around I used adaptibar in conjunction with Marino and finished adaptibar with 70%. Practiced about 10 MPt's and wrote 20 or so essays to completion.

I felt ok on test day, more confident about the MBE but still very challenged by it. I only had 15 minutes for my last essay and might have made a factual mistake that threw off my analysis a bit. I was a bit more tactful with the MPT's but finished both while racing with the clock.

The results are coming this week and my anxiety is up the roof, asking GOD to help me reconcile with whatever my verdic may be. Hoping for the best for me and for you all.

What's your retaker story, how did you feel taking the exam and how do you feel now?

I failed J16 Texas Bar with a 667. I got a 132.2 on the MBE and somewhere in the 120 range on my essays. This time around I did adaptibar and finished all the questions and then some at 70.1 percent. How I did on exam day is anybodys guess I can't judge that for anything. I did the midterm for barbri in J16 with a 117, and for F17 I got a 143 on the midterm... but I felt the same after I took them. So hopefully I did better on the MBE this time around.

Three weeks before the exam I did about 8 or 9 essays every day, writing a couple out and outlining the rest. I did maybe 4 or 5 a week before that. For the essays, unfortunately, I felt better about them in July. This time I only seemed to know a couple questions... for the other 8/9 it seemed I only knew 2 out of 3 parts for every questions, and by knew I mean I had a decent educated guess. There was 1 question where I just completely blanked. And if I felt better about them in July that doesn't leave me a lot of hope I did better this time.

The MPT is still a mystery to me, as both time during prep I scored decent to well on all my practice MPTs (I did them under timed conditions) but on the actual exam I did not score so well and I think for me since it is the first thing we do I'm just too nervous and jittery. For our short answers I did well last time and felt decent about it this time as well (minus the questions everyone seemed to be like WTF was that about).

All in all I feel worse about it this time than I did last time, I'm pretty sure I failed but I'm still hopping for a miracle later this week to see my name on the pass list. My anxiety was fine until about a 5 days ago, and I have had nightmares every night since, i didnt have any last time around. I was reading somewhere that Texas retakers on average raise their scores by at least 25 points... I only needed 8 more and that is the hope I have been clinging onto. Good luck everyone may we all see our name on the Pass list when it comes out!

[Estecontre]

Hey guys,

I failed the July 2016 bar with a 245. I got a 127 in the MBE, ranged in the lower 50's in my essays and scored in the lower 30's in my MPT's.

This time around I used adaptibar in conjunction with Marino and finished adaptibar with 70%. Practiced about 10 MPt's and wrote 20 or so essays to completion.

I felt ok on test day, more confident about the MBE but still very challenged by it. I only had 15 minutes for my last essay and might have made a factual mistake that threw off my analysis a bit. I was a bit more tactful with the MPT's but finished both while racing with the clock.

The results are coming this week and my anxiety is up the roof, asking GOD to help me reconcile with whatever my verdic may be. Hoping for the best for me and for you all.

What's your retaker story, how did you feel taking the exam and how do you feel now?

Failed the July 2016 Bar with a horrible score, it's so bad that I feel embarrassed even saying it. I got a 120 in the MBE and around 100 on my essays for Texas (I completely didn't answer three whole essays, because I had no idea how to answer them).

This time around I doubted even going because I had missed many study days because I got sick twice to the point where I couldn't focus so instead I just rested in order to recover. I also did less work than the first time and took more days off, this time around I instead tried to memorize the law and just read and re-read my outlines for hours and I would do practice questions with Themis and Adaptibar. Towards the end of my study days leading to the Bar I just did practice questions on Adaptibar, at least 50 but sometimes around 100 or more a day (I only did Adaptibar for about a month after I was getting repeat questions on Themis and was getting questions right because I remembered the answer) and just read outlines. No practice questions for essay or short answer. I figured while it's great to practice essays and short answers, there's no point for me because I have faith in my writing capabilities and you can't write something if you don't know the law or have an idea about the law.

Couple days before leaving to go take the Bar I was so stressed I broke down and didn't want to go. Everything was already paid for and there was no returning at that point. My parents told me to just go and give it my best, that was better than not going at all, and they would be there if I needed to go for a third time. I am really glad I went come the end of day 3. It actually started off pretty bad I mismanaged my time on the MPT and hardly wrote anything (Luckily it's only worth 10 percent in Texas) completely screwed the pooch on that one. MBE is such a toss up that I can't speculate, but all I needed to do was improve by about 15 points which I don't see as difficult, I do have a better feeling about it this time than the last. Essays went a whole lot better I'm glad to say! There was only one essay where I had no idea where to go with and by that time I was so tired that I wrote very little on, but some of the other essays I knew the answer and feel confident in what I wrote. A couple of others ones I got the law a little wrong, but I think I did okay enough to get a decent score. I feel like I can confidently say I answered 4-5 essays really well (right law, right conclusion, right analysis and structure was there); another 4 went good; 3 were meh and 1 that was just off. All-in-all I feel okay, not great, but not bad either. Just a couple more days until I find out.

Anxiety has been okay, a lot better than last time. No nightmares yet and have even had a couple of dreams where I've passed and that deja vu feeling of seeing me passed and doing attorney work, but sadly that's not reality. Fail or pass, I'll take it for what it is, can't do anything about it now but keep on keepin' on.

Sounds like there is some progress to expect in light of how you felt on the essays.

Felt good about the MBE on test day? How were you scoring on adaptibar

I'm not sure how to feel to be honest, although I can for sure say that I improved. I know a 100 a score to be proud of with the essays since it's out of 200, but I left 3 completely blank, my formatting was completely off, and I was only really confident about 2-3 and the rest where educated guesses.

I feel okay MBE it's just so hard to tell with the MBE! I felt okay about it last time, but ended getting below average (didn't help that my GF's dad died the day before the MBE so that threw me off a bit). Plus multiple choice has always been a weakness. I was scoring around 64-67% I can't remember, but it was within that range and I did around 800 questions plus another 300-400 with Themis (forgot the actual number but I remember I did over 1000 questions combined).

[Sonny1211]

Hey guys I passed!!! Raised my score by 30 UBE points. Adaptibar and Marino were the way to go for me.

[maztastic247]

Hey guys I passed!!! Raised my score by 30 UBE points. Adaptibar and Marino were the way to go for me.

That is awesome congrats!

[Kalani111]

To give you some faith I just raised my UBE score by at least 22 points and passed in Arizona.

I was so convinced I failed that I decided to take a hike while results came out at 8am. I left my phone at home. My girlfriend came out of the bathroom ( and checked results on her phone in there) and we started up the mountain and she said " you really need to check your results." I jabbed back " no thanks", then she gave me a weird look..."
I said " did I pass"?. She said "yes." My knees nearly buckled. I blacked out the rest of the mile hike.

I outlined, meaning 10 minute timed, 150 essays, and wrote out 30 fully timed essays. Did the huge Kaplan MBE book, and 5 timed mpt'. Total overkill, but hey, I'm in my 40's and couldn't afford to take this test again, phew!

[Kalani111]

Congrats sonny!

[bandida]

I raised my ube score by 60 points and passed F17, second try. Don't give up.