Can I Appeal my Illinois Bar Exam Score? -- JD Advising

Can I Appeal my Illinois Bar Exam Score?

We have been asked this question a lot this week, especially given that February 2018 Illinois bar exam results were just released.

The short answer is, unfortunately, you cannot appeal your Illinois bar exam results. The Illinois Board of Admissions released this scoring memo which states that “Bar examination results are final and non-appealable. The Board of Admissions does not entertain requests for review, regrading, or other relief.” The Board does automatically regrade all scores between a 262 and 265 prior to results being released. But once results are released, they are final.

We know this is very disappointing for students, especially those who were very close to passing. If you failed the Illinois bar exam, unfortunately, an Illinois bar exam appeal is not an option. Now you may be thinking this:

Can I write an appeal to the Illinois bar anyway? I am sure they mis-scored my essays.

You can write a letter to the Illinois Board of Admissions. However, in our experience, the letter will likely not change your score. In fact, Illinois as well as states nationwide, by and large, do not entertain appeals. If you write a letter, you should not get your hopes up and you should start studying for the next bar exam.

If I cannot appeal my Illinois bar exam score, what should I do?

We do have a few useful links and posts for you:

Illinois-specific bar exam posts that you may find helpful:

First, we have a link on what to do if you failed the Illinois bar exam. This can help guide you on what the next steps are.
What your Illinois bar exam score report means – how to dissect it!
How to break down your Illinois bar exam score in terms of percentiles.
Lastly, here is a link to our Uniform Bar Exam course. We have helped several Illinois takers pass the bar exam. The nice thing about Illinois is they release results early, so there is still time to sign up before the course fills up!

Here are a few recent testimonials from students who have taken our Uniform Bar Exam course, including one from a third-time Illinois bar exam taker.

I am so happy to report that I have PASSED The Uniform Bar Exam with a whopping score of 298 (140.5 MBE).

From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU SOOO MUCH for your labor of love and your level of dedication and commitment in preparing me for this exam. As I told you before, you prepared me so well for this exam, I walked-in knowing I was ready and left knowing that I had passed. You were nothing short of absolutely amazing. I cannot thank you enough.

And to my grader, Robert, you ROCK. The way you and Ambika evaluated my writing and was critical about every detail, not only prepared me well for the exam but also in practice. I love and appreciate the brutal honesty and critical feedback from style, grammar, punctuation, content, presentation, every detail made me a much better writer. Again, I cannot thank you both enough.

And to Ashley, thank you so much for having commitment and vision to launch this program, like NO OTHER BAR REVIEW PROGRAM ON THE PLANET. You have assembled a WORLD-CLASS team of talented scholars and I’m so grateful to have learned from two of your very best. I am an unofficial official ambassador of the JD Advising Program and I look forward to every opportunity to brag about just how grateful I am for this program. Again, Thank You!!!!!!! – July 2017 NY Bar Exam UBE taker

My score prior to taking this course was a 236. While the bar examiners refuse to release my passing score, at minimum I made a 30 point jump to pass with a 266. I took the exam twice before taking the JD Advising UBE Course. I would highly recommend using this course versus any commercial course like Barbri or Kaplan. If I could go back I would have never signed up for a commercial course. Unlike commercial courses, JD Advising provided UBE outlines that were not as dense and multiple examples after each concept that actually make sense. Since I have trouble memorizing, this was a game changer because I was mentally capable of breaking down the concept and capable of associating the concept/topic with certain scenarios for a practical use on the exam. Moreover, the UBE Course provided actual bar exam essay questions from the past, allowing everyone to practice questions that will likely be brought up on the actual exam. Lastly, the best way to study for this exam is improving your essays through constant feedback, quizzes that force you to memorize, short outlines with easy to learn mnemonics, and a proper strategy to attack the multiple choice which can only be learned through this course.

I received my Illinois Bar Exam results today and I am very happy to share with you that I passed the exam. I greatly appreciate all of your help throughout this process, all of the feedback on my essays, all of the nuanced questions that you were able to answer, and the constant motivation to master this exam. I hope the rest of the class was as lucky as I was. -July 2017 Illinois Bar Exam taker

Can I Appeal my Illinois Bar Exam Score?