Retired/Licensed MBE Questions Forum

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maxima099

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Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by maxima099 » Mon Jan 15, 2018 12:00 am

First off - I can't believe my login still works. Last time I used this site must have been in 2008. Yes, I've waited that long to sit for the bar for the first time. Have been doing well on simulated MBE questions - about 70-80%

Just started doing BarMax - licensed/retired MBE questions, and am averaging around 58-60%.

Then I heard that retired questions were retired because they are poorly written. I've personally felt this might have been the case, some of the answer choices are ridiculously nuianced or just "the best of the very worst" answer choices.

Bottom line is, I'm not sure where I really stand. Everyone says licened question are best, but these questions are retired for a reason, no?

Could anybody help me figure this out - are the licensed/retired questions reliable indicators of game-day performance?

supa_mitsu

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by supa_mitsu » Mon Jan 15, 2018 3:27 pm

There is a poll here you may be interested in looking at: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=284803

Anyway, it seems a hard question to answer because someone would have to have tried both the bar exam and old/retired questions to make a comparison.

I sat for it twice and what I can say is that luckily the questions are shorter than older questions (just shorter than the ridiculously long ones). Also, I can say that after using Adaptibar for 3 months I improved my MBE around 22 points and as Adaptibar uses only the real old/retired/licensed questions, they must have been useful somehow.

Next February, after another 3 months of Adaptibar I hope to see a further improvement (but even more I hope I won't know by how many points).

maxima099

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by maxima099 » Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:30 pm

That's very insighftul, thanks.

Yes, the really old exam questions are crazy long good to hear that's not the trend.

Did you have a problem getting through the questions in time?

supa_mitsu

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by supa_mitsu » Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:56 pm

The current questions are shorter but don’t expect them to be evidence short. Anyway, yes I definitely had problems with the timing which made me skim and guess the longest ones... which I’m sure didnt help.

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SilvermanBarPrep

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by SilvermanBarPrep » Mon Jan 22, 2018 4:18 pm

The licensed questions should definitely be incorporated into your studying in my opinion, including the recently released 210 questions. But I don't entirely discount the idea that retired questions aren't exactly the best of the questions that have shown up on the exam in the past. For that reason mix them up a bit with some other sources. I like the Finz book, and the Barbri MPQ book is good in my opinion, though it does get mixed reviews.

Sean (Silverman Bar Exam Tutoring)

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JoeSeperac

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by JoeSeperac » Wed Jan 24, 2018 9:03 pm

In my experience, you want to be about 75% correct on the released NCBE questions to score about 140 on the MBE. If you include the released NCBE questions in your studies, make sure to use them as a supplement. You should focus on the 400 OPE questions (which are from 2006-2013) and answer them repeatedly to obtain the rationales for why the options they select are either correct or incorrect (per NCBE’s instructions). The other 1,100 NCBE questions have limited value because of their age (these questions are from 1972-1998). For example, the released 1991 and 1998 NCBE MBE questions (600 questions) available on NCBE’s website (http://www.ncbex.org/exams/mbe/preparing/) contain warnings that they should not be used for substantive preparation for the MBE. Even more telling is that NCBE no longer provides the MBE 1992 questions (581 questions) on their site (although they are still available elsewhere). NCBE provides the following warning in the MBE 1992 question book: DO NOT USE THESE QUESTIONS TO STUDY CONTENT FOR THE MULTISTATE BAR EXAMINATION!!”see https://donbushell.com/lawaudio/pdf/MBE ... 061411.pdf

I mention this because I find it extremely rare for NCBE to use such emphasis of two exclamation points. Thus, according to NCBE themselves, over 70% of their released NCBE questions should not be used for substantive preparation for the MBE. Personally, I feel that knowing the law behind the released questions is still helpful, but it is generally not a good idea to devote all your practice time to these questions if they are your only source of substantive MBE knowledge. I find that some retakers actually see their MBE score go down if they only study the NCBE questions in their MBE practice. This is partly because the question topic distribution of the old NCBE questions is not reflective of the current exam and there are also significant gaps contextually. For example, out of the 1,600+ released NCBE questions, there are only two questions on Double Jeopardy (1/10 of 1% of the questions). In contrast, Double Jeopardy is tested fairly frequently on the current MBE (I expect it to represent about 1% of your total MBE score). Thus, if you only rely on the released NCBE questions for your knowledge of Double Jeopardy, you will be blind-sided on the MBE exam (for example, the J17 MBE had 3-5 DJ questions). The entire area of Constitutional Protection of Accused Persons is severely under-represented in the released NCBE questions (it is just 3% of the 1,600 NCBE questions, but expected to be 7% or more of your MBE score). If you miss 50% of the Criminal Procedure MBE questions due to this incomplete knowledge, that represents about 5 MBE points. To cite another major example, what is being tested on MBE Real Property has changed significantly and is not appropriately reflected. For example, Fair Housing Act/broker commissions/fixtures are now tested on the MBE, yet you won't find these topics in the questions (instead you will find volumes on future interests & RAP which are now rarely tested). Thus, if your MBE study is based only on the law behind the released NCBE MBE questions, you will be under-prepared for some areas and over-prepared for others. Accordingly, always try to mix up your MBE practice – it is what high scoring MBE examinees generally do.

rayforoc

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by rayforoc » Wed Jan 24, 2018 10:53 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:In my experience, you want to be about 75% correct on the released NCBE questions to score about 140 on the MBE. If you include the released NCBE questions in your studies, make sure to use them as a supplement. You should focus on the 400 OPE questions (which are from 2006-2013) and answer them repeatedly to obtain the rationales for why the options they select are either correct or incorrect (per NCBE’s instructions). The other 1,100 NCBE questions have limited value because of their age (these questions are from 1972-1998). For example, the released 1991 and 1998 NCBE MBE questions (600 questions) available on NCBE’s website (http://www.ncbex.org/exams/mbe/preparing/) contain warnings that they should not be used for substantive preparation for the MBE. Even more telling is that NCBE no longer provides the MBE 1992 questions (581 questions) on their site (although they are still available elsewhere). NCBE provides the following warning in the MBE 1992 question book: DO NOT USE THESE QUESTIONS TO STUDY CONTENT FOR THE MULTISTATE BAR EXAMINATION!!”see https://donbushell.com/lawaudio/pdf/MBE ... 061411.pdf

I mention this because I find it extremely rare for NCBE to use such emphasis of two exclamation points. Thus, according to NCBE themselves, over 70% of their released NCBE questions should not be used for substantive preparation for the MBE. Personally, I feel that knowing the law behind the released questions is still helpful, but it is generally not a good idea to devote all your practice time to these questions if they are your only source of substantive MBE knowledge. I find that some retakers actually see their MBE score go down if they only study the NCBE questions in their MBE practice. This is partly because the question topic distribution of the old NCBE questions is not reflective of the current exam and there are also significant gaps contextually. For example, out of the 1,600+ released NCBE questions, there are only two questions on Double Jeopardy (1/10 of 1% of the questions). In contrast, Double Jeopardy is tested fairly frequently on the current MBE (I expect it to represent about 1% of your total MBE score). Thus, if you only rely on the released NCBE questions for your knowledge of Double Jeopardy, you will be blind-sided on the MBE exam (for example, the J17 MBE had 3-5 DJ questions). The entire area of Constitutional Protection of Accused Persons is severely under-represented in the released NCBE questions (it is just 3% of the 1,600 NCBE questions, but expected to be 7% or more of your MBE score). If you miss 50% of the Criminal Procedure MBE questions due to this incomplete knowledge, that represents about 5 MBE points. To cite another major example, what is being tested on MBE Real Property has changed significantly and is not appropriately reflected. For example, Fair Housing Act/broker commissions/fixtures are now tested on the MBE, yet you won't find these topics in the questions (instead you will find volumes on future interests & RAP which are now rarely tested). Thus, if your MBE study is based only on the law behind the released NCBE MBE questions, you will be under-prepared for some areas and over-prepared for others. Accordingly, always try to mix up your MBE practice – it is what high scoring MBE examinees generally do.
Thanks for this, JoeSeperac.

Quoting you here, "You should focus on the 400 OPE questions (which are from 2006-2013) and answer them repeatedly to obtain the rationales for why the options they select are either correct or incorrect (per NCBE’s instructions)."

Where can we find these specfic 400 questions? Is there a link you can provide?

L_William_W

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by L_William_W » Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:06 am

My MBE went from 118.6 in July 2014 to 149.3 in July 2017. Strategies and Tactics Finz is the closest questions to the actual exam. It's deceptively difficult. I also recommend Kaplan. I'm not a fan of the released questions since they don't reflect the level of difficulty of the questions on the current exam.

JoeSeperac

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:32 am

rayforoc wrote: Quoting you here, "You should focus on the 400 OPE questions (which are from 2006-2013) and answer them repeatedly to obtain the rationales for why the options they select are either correct or incorrect (per NCBE’s instructions)."

Where can we find these specfic 400 questions? Is there a link you can provide?
The 400 OPE questions are a set of four MBE Online Practice Exams (called OPE 1, OPE 2, OPE 3 and OPE 4) that use questions drawn from actual MBEs administered in past years. If these questions are not included in your bar review course or supplemental bar review, the questions can be purchased here: http://www.ncbex.org/study-aids/

These questions will best represent what you will see on the upcoming MBE exam. According to a short article entitled Pedagogical Advice On Studying For The MBE by Susan M. Case, Ph.D. of NCBE, "[l]earning the material presented in the four OPEs should put you in a very good position to do well on the MBE." See http://seperac.com/pdf/Susan%20Case-MBE ... Advice.pdf

NCBE recommends that examinees answer these questions repeatedly up until the exam date to obtain the rationales for why the options they select are either correct or incorrect. If you answer these questions before you have fully reviewed MBE law, you should use the questions merely as a learning tool. If you answer these questions after you have fully reviewed MBE law, these 400 questions will serve as a good estimate of your MBE exam performance.

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JoeSeperac

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:49 am

L_William_W wrote:My MBE went from 118.6 in July 2014 to 149.3 in July 2017. Strategies and Tactics Finz is the closest questions to the actual exam. It's deceptively difficult. I also recommend Kaplan. I'm not a fan of the released questions since they don't reflect the level of difficulty of the questions on the current exam.
Congrats on the MBE score increase - it is actually pretty remarkable. In a 2005 study, NCBE analyzed the performance of 4,500 examinees who scored less than a scaled 140 on a July MBE and then re-took the MBE in February. Based on your initial MBE score, the average MBE score increase was 10 points, so a 30 point increase is substantial.

The MBE is designed to consist of easy, medium, and difficult questions. I believe the released NCBE questions represent the easy to medium difficulty questions an examinee will see on the MBE. Thus, if you are testing only on these questions and getting 60%-70% correct, you will generally answer 60%-70% of the easy to medium difficulty questions correctly on the MBE and maybe 40% of the difficult questions, leading to an MBE score in the 120-130s. Keep in mind this is a generality. In the end, it really comes down to the examinee (how intelligent they are; how well they learn from their mistakes as they study; how long they study; etc). For example, one examinee emailed me the following after the J17 exam:

I just received my scores from the July CBX and there is an odd percentage change in Contracts from February to July. In February, my percentage below for Contracts was 46.8 and in July .2 (yes, .2). How can this be? All of my other scores were consistent and I diligently used both Adaptabar and Barbri, completing at least 1500 questions between May and July. Moreover, I was scoring on par with Barbri's mixed sets (and of course, I did all of them).

The examinee scored a 127 on the MBE in F17 and a 129 on the MBE in J17 (whereas an examinee generally needs a 150 on the MBE in CA to pass and about a 140 in NY to pass). Accordingly, for this examinee, testing on the released NCBE questions along with Barbri did not help the examinee’s MBE score. Meanwhile, another examinee will do the exact same thing and get a 160 on the MBE. Thus, while I regard some MBE questions as better than others, it really comes down to the examinee and how they study/practice.

supa_mitsu

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by supa_mitsu » Thu Jan 25, 2018 2:15 am

Speaking of the OPE: does anyone know why the hell in Adaptibar you have the option to EXCLUDE them from your questions but not be tested only on those?

https://ibb.co/f925ZG

rayforoc

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by rayforoc » Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:46 am

Thanks JoeSeperac! I purchased those four exams. Already have the study aid. I was looking at those a couple weeks actually but didn't notice they were called "OPEs." Cheers.

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by myrtlewinston » Thu Jan 25, 2018 7:38 pm

Besides OPE 4, does Emanuel contain other OPEs?

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Re: Retired/Licensed MBE Questions

Post by Batibut » Tue May 22, 2018 9:34 pm

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