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JoeSeperac

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:26 pm

byag wrote:Hi Joe @JoeSeperac,

I took the February 2018 NY UBE exam and received a 162.6 written and a 134.4 MBE. Can you please tell me where my scores rank? Your website was extremely useful to me; due in part to your analysis (and other resources) I was able to increase my total UBE score from 247 (July '17) to 297. I am now preparing for the FL exam and need to raise my MBE score to FL's required 136 (missed it by 1.6!!) so I look forward to using your website again in the coming months. Thanks!
Congratulations on passing. I'm glad the subscription helped. Based on your scaled MBE score of 134.4, your estimated raw MBE score was about 107/175 correct (based on F13 scale). This means you answered about 61.1% of the graded MBE questions correctly. This places you in the 49.5% percentile for the MBE. This means that 50.5% of Feb examinees nationwide did better than you on the MBE based on your scaled MBE score of 134.4 (based on F16 data). Based on a total score of 297, this means your written score was 162.6 which would have placed you in the 96.9% percentile among examinees nationwide (meaning that 3.1% of examinees nationwide would have scored better than you on the MEE/MPT).

I'm guessing you were about 60% in MBE practice. If it was far off from this, let me know.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:28 pm

pech71 wrote:
byag wrote:Hi Joe @JoeSeperac,

I took the February 2018 NY UBE exam and received a 162.6 written and a 134.4 MBE. Can you please tell me where my scores rank? Your website was extremely useful to me; due in part to your analysis (and other resources) I was able to increase my total UBE score from 247 (July '17) to 297. I am now preparing for the FL exam and need to raise my MBE score to FL's required 136 (missed it by 1.6!!) so I look forward to using your website again in the coming months. Thanks!

Is it just me or do so many people this time around have really high essay scores compared to MBE scores? I have seen many people post @joe for analysis and their essays be 15-20 sometimes 30 points higher than MBE.

Did you score high on essays or MPT? Makes me think there is something in a question or two where some people just got it correct (like civ pro sanctions rule, property, and crim law fit for trial rule) and shot them ahead of curve.
I answered you by email but I'm answering here too in case anyone else is interested.

Those samples are too small to make any type of prediction. For example, in F17, of the 100+ examinees who sent me their scores (still a really small sample), the difference between MBE and Written Scores ranged from a max of 43 to a min of -28 with an average difference of 3. My guess is that if you look at the entire population, the average difference between MBE and Written Scores will always be less than one (as in the MO data).

As much as everyone dislikes scaling, it leads to a more reliable score. For example, prior to July 2012, Michigan scaled the essays to the MBE. Then, for the July 2012 exam, the Michigan Board of Law Examiners changed the grading formula and stopped scaling the raw essay points on the Michigan portion of the bar exam. From what I have read on this, the Michigan bar examiners felt the quality of the Michigan examinees' essays was diminishing, but their MBE scores were improving, resulting in higher pass rates due to the better MBE scores coupled with the scaling of essay scores to the MBE. What has likely happening was that Michigan examinees were focusing on the MBE portion of the exam at the expense of the written portion. Since the written portion was scaled to the MBE using an equating method, the overall decline in performance on the essay portion was masked by the MBE equating. In one of the articles I read, the Michigan Board of Law Examiners were complaining that the examinee essays were pretty poor as compared to prior years. Thus, the Michigan bar examiners stopped scaling their essays to the MBE in July 2012. However, this resulted in a precipitious drop in the July 2012 Michigan pass rates (between 1995-2011 the July pass rate was about 75% and then the July 2012 pass rate was 57% - the lowest it had even been prior to that was 59% in 1995). What happened after that is exactly what was predicted by NCBE – the pass rates between July and February started becoming consistent, even though the pool of candidates in July were considered more knowledgeable (between 1995-2011 the July pass rate was about 75% while the Feb pass rate was about 67%; for the period between 2012-2014, July pass rate was about 61% while the Feb pass rate was about 62%). By not scaling, the 2012-2014 February Michigan examinees were passing the exam at a higher percentage than July examinees who should be more knowledgeable. In July 2014, Michigan flip-flopped and went back to scaling essays (likely to stop giving an unintended advantage to February examinees).

As much as the MBE drives whether you pass, the MBE average will drive the scaling of the essays. For example, a few years back NY tested a really weird corporations question. Many examinees bombed it (the passing essays were only 300-400 hundred words long whereas typically a passing essay was 800 words long). But it really didn’t affect the scoring or scale. Everyone will just get rank-ordered and then the scale adjusts the score to reflect the overall knowledge-level of that administration of examinees.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by byag » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:39 pm

pech71 wrote:
byag wrote:Hi Joe @JoeSeperac,

I took the February 2018 NY UBE exam and received a 162.6 written and a 134.4 MBE. Can you please tell me where my scores rank? Your website was extremely useful to me; due in part to your analysis (and other resources) I was able to increase my total UBE score from 247 (July '17) to 297. I am now preparing for the FL exam and need to raise my MBE score to FL's required 136 (missed it by 1.6!!) so I look forward to using your website again in the coming months. Thanks!

Is it just me or do so many people this time around have really high essay scores compared to MBE scores? I have seen many people post @joe for analysis and their essays be 15-20 sometimes 30 points higher than MBE.

Did you score high on essays or MPT? Makes me think there is something in a question or two where some people just got it correct (like civ pro sanctions rule, property, and crim law fit for trial rule) and shot them ahead of curve.
I honestly don’t know how I did on the essays or mpt specifically because New York doesn’t give you the breakdown of the scores unless you didn’t pass.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by CHD33 » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:53 pm

Hi Joe - Thanks for all your insight and help. Could you please help calculate my stats as well: UBE: 277 (New York); MBE: 135.9. Thank you!

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:02 pm

Respondeat_Inferior wrote:Hi Joe,

1. Do you have any hobbies or anything you like to do in your off-time in particular?

2. In your opinion, what is the best restaurant you've eaten at?

3. Plain-toe, cap-toe, or wingtip?
1. Hobby-wise, my claim to fame is chess. Rusty now, but I used to play in tournaments and had a USCF rating just shy of 1900. Now I mainly play golf. I guess I can also say that computers is a hobby since I spend a lot of time on them even when not working.

2. There was this place near Killington, VT that had the best wood-fired pizza I ever had. People tell me the place is still there, but I haven't been back in over 20 years.

3. Plain-toe

4. I'll throw in my favorite beer - Elysian Space Dust IPA.

It's funny - non-bar questions actually take longer to answer.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:08 pm

hope2018 wrote:JoeSeperac, You are awesome!!! :D
I wonder if you will be able to run the same formula for Ca examiners whenever they release the results (May 18th)?
Currently for CA, I can break down your MBE subscores and tell you how many MBE questions away from 1440 you were:
https://seperac.com/subscoreform.php

If I get enough CA scores, I can make a full score calculator - I just need a large enough set of points so I can interpolate.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by onionhead » Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:19 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:
onionhead wrote:hey joe,

If you dont mind. grateful for your insight. got a score of 300 and MBE 140.5.

thanks!
Based on your scaled MBE score of 140.5, your estimated raw MBE score was about 115/175 correct (based on F13 scale). This means you answered about 66% of the graded MBE questions correctly. This places you in the 65.8% percentile for the MBE. This means that 34.2% of Feb examinees nationwide did better than you on the MBE based on your scaled MBE score of 140.5 (based on F16 data). Based on a total score of 300, this means you bowled a perfect game. It also means your written score was 159.5 which would have placed you in the 95.2% percentile among examinees nationwide (meaning that 4.8% of examinees nationwide would have scored better than you on the MEE/MPT).
thanks joe! you're da best. :D

I did feel like i did better for the essays than the MBE when i took the exam. on the MBE day, seeing people leave the exam hall with >30 mins on the clock really stressed me out.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by onionhead » Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:22 pm

Respondeat_Inferior wrote:Hi Joe,

1. Do you have any hobbies or anything you like to do in your off-time in particular?

2. In your opinion, what is the best restaurant you've eaten at?

3. Plain-toe, cap-toe, or wingtip?
4. pineapple on pizza. yay or nay?

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Apr 26, 2018 11:24 pm

CHD33 wrote:Hi Joe - Thanks for all your insight and help. Could you please help calculate my stats as well: UBE: 277 (New York); MBE: 135.9. Thank you!
Based on your scaled MBE score of 135.9, your estimated raw MBE score was about 110/175 correct (based on F13 scale). This means you answered about 62.9% of the graded MBE questions correctly. This places you in the 53.6% percentile for the MBE. This means that 46.4% of Feb examinees nationwide did better than you on the MBE based on your scaled MBE score of 135.9 (based on F16 data). Based on a total score of 277, this means your written score was 141.1 which would have placed you in the 67.1% percentile among examinees nationwide (meaning that 32.9% of examinees nationwide would have scored better than you on the MEE/MPT). To pass the F18 exam in NY, you needed to be better than 38% of the examinees taking it, and you ended up scoring better than about 60% of them (based on national stats).

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Apr 26, 2018 11:30 pm

onionhead wrote: 4. pineapple on pizza. yay or nay?
I like pineapple and I like pizza but not pineapple pizza. And I would rather fight 100 duck-sized horses. And why aren't we talking about Rampart?

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by Krissynateylee » Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:28 am

jrstephens1991 wrote:Can we just go ahead and make this a thing? :lol:


The guy is a genius and can answer pretty much any question that has to do with a mathmatical breakdown of you MBE and MEE scores.

@JoeSeperac do you mind?
So i played around with your calculator, foreign educated-DC Bar etc etc and every mpre grade i put in no matter how high its still an automatic fail... Why is that? So Foreign educated are bound to automatically fail?

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:25 am

Krissynateylee wrote:
jrstephens1991 wrote:Can we just go ahead and make this a thing? :lol:


The guy is a genius and can answer pretty much any question that has to do with a mathmatical breakdown of you MBE and MEE scores.

@JoeSeperac do you mind?
So i played around with your calculator, foreign educated-DC Bar etc etc and every mpre grade i put in no matter how high its still an automatic fail... Why is that? So Foreign educated are bound to automatically fail?
Did you read the caveat on the UBE Score Estimator page?

CAVEAT: This calculator is less accurate for foreign examinees and for multiple re-takers. The calculator determines the mean total score for a particular demographic and then adjusts based on other criteria such as MPRE/UGPA/LSAT/LPGA. For foreign examinees, the only adjustment that can be made is with the MPRE. However, foreign examinee generally have a pass rate of 50% or less on the bar exam (meaning these examinees are more likely to fail the exam than pass it). Since foreign examinee demographic means are usually below passing, with the absense of other adjustments, the calculator often has the average foreign examinee failing the exam. For multiple re-takers, there is simply not a lot of data from NCBE or the state bar examiners. Once I collect more data, I expect future iterations of this calculator to be more accurate. However, as discussed above, your MBE practice scores, assuming the MBE practice questions are of sufficient difficulty and representative of the topics tested, will give you the most insight as to whether or not you will pass the UBE.


Unfortunately, there is no data on foreign examinees regarding the UBE exam, so I am relying on whatever data I have from NY, which is very little. The problem is that almost all foreign examinees are more likely to fail than pass, with the exception of examinees from Canada, Australia and Germany. To improve the calculator, the most helpful thing examinees can do is submit the form with their information (including email) and then I follow up after the exam to see how accurate the estimate was. Each iteration will make it more accurate than the last, but since it will generally be based on small samples, there will always be problems with its reliability. At a minimum, use the calculator to motivate you. For example, the overall pass-rate for all foreign examinees taking the F18 NY UBE was 31%. The historical average from 2004-2018 is 28%. So without driving it down into other demographics, only 1 out of 3 foreign examinees pass in February in NY and I would expect this to be similar in any other UBE state that has a pass rate of 266.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by Krissynateylee » Fri Apr 27, 2018 11:57 am

JoeSeperac wrote:
Krissynateylee wrote:
jrstephens1991 wrote:Can we just go ahead and make this a thing? :lol:


The guy is a genius and can answer pretty much any question that has to do with a mathmatical breakdown of you MBE and MEE scores.

@JoeSeperac do you mind?
So i played around with your calculator, foreign educated-DC Bar etc etc and every mpre grade i put in no matter how high its still an automatic fail... Why is that? So Foreign educated are bound to automatically fail?
Did you read the caveat on the UBE Score Estimator page?

CAVEAT: This calculator is less accurate for foreign examinees and for multiple re-takers. The calculator determines the mean total score for a particular demographic and then adjusts based on other criteria such as MPRE/UGPA/LSAT/LPGA. For foreign examinees, the only adjustment that can be made is with the MPRE. However, foreign examinee generally have a pass rate of 50% or less on the bar exam (meaning these examinees are more likely to fail the exam than pass it). Since foreign examinee demographic means are usually below passing, with the absense of other adjustments, the calculator often has the average foreign examinee failing the exam. For multiple re-takers, there is simply not a lot of data from NCBE or the state bar examiners. Once I collect more data, I expect future iterations of this calculator to be more accurate. However, as discussed above, your MBE practice scores, assuming the MBE practice questions are of sufficient difficulty and representative of the topics tested, will give you the most insight as to whether or not you will pass the UBE.


Unfortunately, there is no data on foreign examinees regarding the UBE exam, so I am relying on whatever data I have from NY, which is very little. The problem is that almost all foreign examinees are more likely to fail than pass, with the exception of examinees from Canada, Australia and Germany. To improve the calculator, the most helpful thing examinees can do is submit the form with their information (including email) and then I follow up after the exam to see how accurate the estimate was. Each iteration will make it more accurate than the last, but since it will generally be based on small samples, there will always be problems with its reliability. At a minimum, use the calculator to motivate you. For example, the overall pass-rate for all foreign examinees taking the F18 NY UBE was 31%. The historical average from 2004-2018 is 28%. So without driving it down into other demographics, only 1 out of 3 foreign examinees pass in February in NY and I would expect this to be similar in any other UBE state that has a pass rate of 266.
Yes i read the caveat first before i put in scores and yes i do believe the statistics for foreign educated is misleading. I graduated with an LL.M. last year and my classmates who took the NY bar in July all passed. I received a much higher score on my mpre than most but the calculator still shows fail. I will wait for the results to see how i performed.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:04 pm

Krissynateylee wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
Krissynateylee wrote:
jrstephens1991 wrote:Can we just go ahead and make this a thing? :lol:


The guy is a genius and can answer pretty much any question that has to do with a mathmatical breakdown of you MBE and MEE scores.

@JoeSeperac do you mind?
So i played around with your calculator, foreign educated-DC Bar etc etc and every mpre grade i put in no matter how high its still an automatic fail... Why is that? So Foreign educated are bound to automatically fail?
Did you read the caveat on the UBE Score Estimator page?

CAVEAT: This calculator is less accurate for foreign examinees and for multiple re-takers. The calculator determines the mean total score for a particular demographic and then adjusts based on other criteria such as MPRE/UGPA/LSAT/LPGA. For foreign examinees, the only adjustment that can be made is with the MPRE. However, foreign examinee generally have a pass rate of 50% or less on the bar exam (meaning these examinees are more likely to fail the exam than pass it). Since foreign examinee demographic means are usually below passing, with the absense of other adjustments, the calculator often has the average foreign examinee failing the exam. For multiple re-takers, there is simply not a lot of data from NCBE or the state bar examiners. Once I collect more data, I expect future iterations of this calculator to be more accurate. However, as discussed above, your MBE practice scores, assuming the MBE practice questions are of sufficient difficulty and representative of the topics tested, will give you the most insight as to whether or not you will pass the UBE.


Unfortunately, there is no data on foreign examinees regarding the UBE exam, so I am relying on whatever data I have from NY, which is very little. The problem is that almost all foreign examinees are more likely to fail than pass, with the exception of examinees from Canada, Australia and Germany. To improve the calculator, the most helpful thing examinees can do is submit the form with their information (including email) and then I follow up after the exam to see how accurate the estimate was. Each iteration will make it more accurate than the last, but since it will generally be based on small samples, there will always be problems with its reliability. At a minimum, use the calculator to motivate you. For example, the overall pass-rate for all foreign examinees taking the F18 NY UBE was 31%. The historical average from 2004-2018 is 28%. So without driving it down into other demographics, only 1 out of 3 foreign examinees pass in February in NY and I would expect this to be similar in any other UBE state that has a pass rate of 266.
Yes i read the caveat first before i put in scores and yes i do believe the statistics for foreign educated is misleading. I graduated with an LL.M. last year and my classmates who took the NY bar in July all passed. I received a much higher score on my mpre than most but the calculator still shows fail. I will wait for the results to see how i performed.
I hope after a few more iterations, the calculator will do a better job with predicting outcomes for foreign examinees. For example, if I add a demographic for nationality (Canadian, Australian, Chinese), this will make it more accurate. But even looking at First Time Foreign examinees in July, they are still more likely to fail than to pass (which means the projected score will be below 266 rather than above it). In looking at data from 2004 to present, the average July pass rate for First Time Foreign Educated is 46.9% (versus 85% for First Time ABA Graduates). Thus, the calculator can't tell a First Time Foreign Educated that they are more likely to score above 266 when they statistically are not. For example, take a look here:
https://seperac.com/downloads/Seperac%2 ... 0order.pdf

The only Foreign demographic that is above passing is July First Time Foreign Educated Caucasians (my guess is that you are Caucasian). Every other Foreign demographic is below passing.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:20 pm

Krissynateylee wrote:Yes i read the caveat first before i put in scores and yes i do believe the statistics for foreign educated is misleading. I graduated with an LL.M. last year and my classmates who took the NY bar in July all passed. I received a much higher score on my mpre than most but the calculator still shows fail. I will wait for the results to see how i performed.
FYI, I just updated the UBE Score Estimator to say the results can be misleading for Foreign examinees.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by Krissynateylee » Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:24 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:
Krissynateylee wrote:Yes i read the caveat first before i put in scores and yes i do believe the statistics for foreign educated is misleading. I graduated with an LL.M. last year and my classmates who took the NY bar in July all passed. I received a much higher score on my mpre than most but the calculator still shows fail. I will wait for the results to see how i performed.
FYI, I just updated the UBE Score Estimator to say the results can be misleading for Foreign examinees.
That's better, less ambiguous. I should say it's rather disappointing seeing an automatic fail based solely on being a foreign educated Attorney.

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by testtaker123456 » Fri Apr 27, 2018 3:35 pm

Hi Joe, Can you please calculate my stats? My score was a 339 -- 169.2 MBE, 169.8 MPT/MEE. I saw in an earlier post you said that highest possible score was a 363? Can you unpack that please? I thought the test was out of a possible 400. Thanks!

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by Neilt001 » Fri Apr 27, 2018 4:44 pm

Respondeat_Inferior wrote:Hi Joe,

1. Do you have any hobbies or anything you like to do in your off-time in particular?

2. In your opinion, what is the best restaurant you've eaten at?

3. Plain-toe, cap-toe, or wingtip?
you're assuming he's human!

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by Nightcrawler » Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:40 pm

Hi Joe, it's me again with a mathematical curiosity about the MBE.

Are MBE questions weighed equally? I think I remember reading somewhere that actually getting a question right that most people got wrong gives you more points.

In that case, wouldn't it help in excelling in the MBE focusing more on subjects where most people get lower scores? Like Civ Pro, Contracts, Real Property for example?

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by lawfeller » Fri Apr 27, 2018 8:30 pm

joe! a big favor. i somehow received a 345/176.3. no idea how this happened. would you mind calculating it for me?

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:29 pm

testtaker123456 wrote:Hi Joe, Can you please calculate my stats? My score was a 339 -- 169.2 MBE, 169.8 MPT/MEE. I saw in an earlier post you said that highest possible score was a 363? Can you unpack that please? I thought the test was out of a possible 400. Thanks!
Based on your scaled MBE score of 169.2, your estimated raw MBE score was about 153/175 correct. This is based on the 2013 New York MBE raw/scaled conversion (which is the most recent time a February MBE raw/scaled conversion was released by a state). This means you answered about 87% of the graded MBE questions correctly. Based on the F16 national statistics on the MBE (which serve as a good predictor of this exam’s percentiles), this places you in the 99.1% percentile for the MBE. This means that 0.9% of Feb examinees nationwide did better than you on the MBE based on your scaled MBE score of 169.2. Based on a total score of 339, this means your written score was 169.8. Assuming that the MEE/MPT percentiles follow the national MBE statistics, scoring a 169.8 Scaled MEE/MPT score would have placed you in the 99.3% percentile among examinees nationwide (meaning that 0.7% of examinees nationwide would have scored better than you on the MEE/MPT).

To pass the F18 exam in NY, you needed to be better than 38% of the examinees taking it, and you ended up scoring better than about 99% of them (based on national stats). Not too shabby.

If you don't mind, can you briefly explain how you studied for the MBE (how long, what percentage of your overall study time, what questions you used, how many did you answer overall, and your overall % correct). I ask this to see if there is any commonality in study routines (such as # of practice questions). Also, if you had to attribute your passing to just one thing, what would that be?

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:48 pm

Nightcrawler wrote:Hi Joe, it's me again with a mathematical curiosity about the MBE.

Are MBE questions weighed equally? I think I remember reading somewhere that actually getting a question right that most people got wrong gives you more points.

In that case, wouldn't it help in excelling in the MBE focusing more on subjects where most people get lower scores? Like Civ Pro, Contracts, Real Property for example?
Each MBE question is weighted the same, but they consist of a pre-determined mix of Very Easy, Easy, Average, Harder than Average, and Extremely Difficult questions. For example, on a typical exam form, examinees can expect that 13% of the questions will be Very/Extremely difficult. To illustrate an example of a very difficult question, someone posted the following in 2015 after the exam: “My only other note is that I literally just took Crim Pro: Investigation (everything before trial covered) as one of my last classes in law school, got an A in it, never missed a single warrants/search question in Barbri or the released questions I did (~500 total) and had two search/warrants questions on the test today that I didn't think had a really good answer option available. I could have written a multi-page essay on those question's material but if the answer choice isn't there, what can ya do?

This is a necessary evil. Basically, if all the MBE questions were straight-forward, it would be too difficult to distinguish applicants sufficiently to determine who is qualified versus unqualified. According to NCBE, the MBE is a valid exercise in distinguishing those who are more knowledgeable from those who are less so. From a paper on Item Response Theory (the MBE uses this):

One characteristic of a good test item is that high-ability candidates will answer it correctly more frequently than lower-ability candidates. The a parameter expresses how well an item can differentiate among examinees with different ability levels. Good items usually have discrimination values ranging from 0.5 to 2. This is illustrated by the ICC plots below. The steeper the slope of an ICC, the higher an item’s discrimination value. High discrimination indicates that higher-scoring examinees tend to answer the item correctly, while lower-scoring examinees tend to answer it incorrectly.

Suppose we administer a 30-item test to a large group of examinees. After testing, we select samples of high-ability examinees (Group A) and low-ability examinees (Group B). Examinees in Group A answered an average of 28 items correctly, compared to an average of only 8 correct answers in Group B. An item that nearly all examinees in Group A answered correctly and nearly all examinees in Group B answered incorrectly will have a high discrimination estimate. On the other hand, if most examinees from both Groups A and B answered an item the same way—either correctly or incorrectly—then the item most likely has low discrimination since it does not help us distinguish between higher- and lower-ability examinees.


That said, there are some strategies that can be applied to MBE questions, but I only discuss that on my subscription site. Please note that most examinees don’t need to bother with strategies. If you are a first-time domestic examinee with a GPA above 3.0, just follow your bar review course and you will be fine.

JoeSeperac

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by JoeSeperac » Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:55 pm

lawfeller wrote:joe! a big favor. i somehow received a 345/176.3. no idea how this happened. would you mind calculating it for me?
Based on your scaled MBE score of 176.3, your estimated raw MBE score was about 162/175 correct (based on F13 scale). This means you answered about 92.6% of the graded MBE questions correctly. This places you in the 99.8% percentile for the MBE. This means that 0.2% of Feb examinees nationwide did better than you on the MBE based on your scaled MBE score of 176.3 (based on F16 data). Based on a total score of 345, this means your written score was 168.7 which would have placed you in the 99% percentile among examinees nationwide (meaning that 1% of examinees nationwide would have scored better than you on the MEE/MPT).

You have now taken the TLS lead for top score, edging out rNadOm's 343. So I have to ask, what do you think helped you on the MBE the most?

lawfeller

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by lawfeller » Fri Apr 27, 2018 10:15 pm

thank you! i used barmaxx and constantly had their lectures on repeat, even when i was riding my bike at the beach. i also did all of the emanuele's mbe questions in 10 and 20 question chunks and tried to identify the question structures. during the test i did a first scan to see if the question was an easier one and answered it if so. if not, i worked every question backward, eliminating the incorrect answers one by one. but i walked out of the buffalo convention center after the exam questioning whether i had passed. i think the non-scored mbe questions were so bizarre this time that it threw everyone (including me) off in terms of their performance.

testtaker123456

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Re: The "Ask @JoeSeperac" Thread

Post by testtaker123456 » Fri Apr 27, 2018 11:34 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:
testtaker123456 wrote:Hi Joe, Can you please calculate my stats? My score was a 339 -- 169.2 MBE, 169.8 MPT/MEE. I saw in an earlier post you said that highest possible score was a 363? Can you unpack that please? I thought the test was out of a possible 400. Thanks!
Based on your scaled MBE score of 169.2, your estimated raw MBE score was about 153/175 correct. This is based on the 2013 New York MBE raw/scaled conversion (which is the most recent time a February MBE raw/scaled conversion was released by a state). This means you answered about 87% of the graded MBE questions correctly. Based on the F16 national statistics on the MBE (which serve as a good predictor of this exam’s percentiles), this places you in the 99.1% percentile for the MBE. This means that 0.9% of Feb examinees nationwide did better than you on the MBE based on your scaled MBE score of 169.2. Based on a total score of 339, this means your written score was 169.8. Assuming that the MEE/MPT percentiles follow the national MBE statistics, scoring a 169.8 Scaled MEE/MPT score would have placed you in the 99.3% percentile among examinees nationwide (meaning that 0.7% of examinees nationwide would have scored better than you on the MEE/MPT).

To pass the F18 exam in NY, you needed to be better than 38% of the examinees taking it, and you ended up scoring better than about 99% of them (based on national stats). Not too shabby.

If you don't mind, can you briefly explain how you studied for the MBE (how long, what percentage of your overall study time, what questions you used, how many did you answer overall, and your overall % correct). I ask this to see if there is any commonality in study routines (such as # of practice questions). Also, if you had to attribute your passing to just one thing, what would that be?
I took Themis, but I was working 24/7, which didn't leave a lot of time for studying. I started the course early (around November) and got through the recommended 75% of the material but I didn't study every day or even very consistently. I picked up the pace in February but I was still only able to study a couple of times a week for short periods of time (e.g., doing MBE practice questions and reviewing my answers while commuting). I was consistently scoring very highly on MBE practice exams -- I took all three or four of them and was getting on average 85-90% of the questions right -- but I only made it through about half of Themis's graded essay questions and I never took any MPT practice exams.

I took the California bar exam successfully about five years ago, but I haven't been practicing for most of that time. The only thing I could really attribute my passing to is luck.

If you know, what is the UBE out of if not 400? I saw you tell someone else that the highest possible score would have been around a 363 and I'd really like to understand that math.

Seriously? What are you waiting for?

Now there's a charge.
Just kidding ... it's still FREE!


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