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5 Tips to Improve Your MEE Score—By Someone Who Scored In The 99th Percentile on the MEE

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Improve Your MEE Score

5 Tips to Improve Your MEE Score — By Someone Who Scored In The 99th Percentile on the MEE

If you are in a Uniform Bar Exam jurisdiction, the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) is worth 30% of your score. Thus, it is definitely enough of your score to devote serious study time to. You can’t afford to throw away any points! If you are looking for ways to improve your MEE score, keep reading!

5 Tips to Improve Your MEE Score — By Someone Who Scored In The 99th Percentile on the MEE

1. Be sure to focus on the highly tested topics.

You definitely want to make sure that you cover all of the testable topics in your preparation for the bar exam. This is also true for the MEE. However, it is smart to pay special attention to those subjects of law that are more highly tested than others. For instance, conflicts of law is not tested as a stand-alone subject. Instead, it is tested in the context of another subject—like civil procedure or family law. And it is generally tested in similar ways.

Further, knowing that civil procedure is a favorite MEE topic is helpful because then you can make sure that you get plenty of practice in. Additionally, topics like criminal law and procedure tend to be less frequently tested on the whole. Thus, in other words, familiarizing yourself with the frequency in which they test MEE subjects is a step in the right direction to improve your MEE score by ensuring that you are studying strategically. If you want to learn more about this, check out our MEE frequency chart.

However, it would be wise to take it one additional step in your approach of studying smart. Not only should you pay attention to the highly tested subjects on the MEE, but you should be aware of the highly tested topics within those areas. The writers of the exam do not reinvent the wheel every single time they write the exam.

Thus, it is really effective to make sure that you can competently handle those highly tested issues. If you are wondering how to figure out which areas are highly tested, and want a free resource, check out this post and youtube video (that comes with a free guide) on highly tested MEE topics. If you want to pay for an even more detailed resource, check out our one sheets, which contain the highly tested topics within each MEE subject. The takeaway, is that if you are familiar with the highly tested subjects and topics within each subject you can make sure that you are well prepared with good rule statements and the ability to analyze the issue (which will help you improve your MEE score).

Finally, focusing on the highly tested subjects and topics of the MEE will ensure that you know how to discuss multiple approaches under the law where applicable. Every single administration, students lose points on the MEE because they did not know they were supposed to discuss two approaches or did not know how to handle the fact that there was a majority or minority approach to the issue. Thus, it is worthwhile to know how to handle the highly tested areas if you want to improve your MEE score.

2. Make your answer easy to give points to.

Just like with MPT practice, where it is necessary to have a good basic format for each type of task, for the MEE it is important to have a good structure. This is important to improve your MEE score because if you have a good structure, it is easy for the grader to give points to, which will translate into a higher score. So, utilize headings to direct the grader to the issues that you are working through. Draw attention to the headings by bolding and underlining. Finally, structure your headings to answer the call of the question. It is a waste of time to try and formulate issue statements, so instead, use headings.

Then, under each heading, start with your applicable rule statement and then move into the analysis of the issue and conclusion. Many students find it helpful to use separate paragraphs for the rule, analysis and conclusion. This is a good rule of thumb to help improve your MEE score because then it is readily clear to the grader that you have the rule, analysis and conclusion, without them having to search for it. For more detailed information on how to structure your MEE answer click here.

3. Practice makes perfect!

The best thing you can do to improve your MEE score, is to practice. By practicing you can figure out if you having timing issues or if you able to do the work in the 30 given minutes. Also, by practicing you gain exposure to the different subjects tested and how they ask questions. It is also through practice that you can figure out the best way to answer a question where the applicable rule has a majority or minority approach.

We also believe that you should do both timed and untimed practice. This way you can get the feel for what 30 minutes actually feels like, and when you practice untimed, you are able to work through the question without thinking about the clock. Untimed practice is also good if you are going to simply issue spot the essay and bullet your response. By combining both types of practice into your schedule you are ensuring that you get lots of exposure to the questions, tackling timing issues, practice issue spotting, but also practicing basic structure. This is a key ingredient if you want to improve your MEE score.

4. Self-grade!

Obviously practicing MEE questions is a key component to improving your MEE score, but simply practicing isn’t enough. You should make sure that you are taking the time to self-grade your MEE answers after you practice. If you don’t self-grade, you are really just selling yourself short. You won’t have any idea where you need to improve in order for your score to go up. If you are wondering how to self-grade and want to read a more detailed post, check out this post on how to self-grade bar exam answers.

Self-grading is without a doubt, the most important part of your practice. When you self-grade, be sure that you are comparing your answer to the sample answer. Be sure you make notes on your answer  when you do a good job and also where you make mistakes. Be sure if you get something wrong that you actually take the time to fix it. For instance, if you state the rule incorrectly, be sure that you write out the correct rule. Your self-graded MEE answers are a great resource to review later, and will definitely help you improve your MEE score! For more information on how to study MEE sample answers see this post.

5. Save a few minutes at the end to make sure that you have incorporated facts.

This last tip is something that we truly believe will help you improve your MEE score. If you can, try to save 2-3 minutes at the end of each question. During these extra few minutes be sure to read over your answer once. This will ensure that you didn’t make any glaring mistakes. It also allows you to fix a typo or two, which will certainly enhance readability.

Also, during these few extra minutes, try to revisit the fact pattern and see if you can incorporate another fact or two into your analysis of the issues posed. This will definitely help improve your MEE score because it is essentially “beefing up” your analysis. Plus, many students find that their analysis was a bit lacking, so by adding to it, they are sure to nail those points.

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