How to Quickly Improve your MBE Score

How to Quickly Improve your MBE Score

If you are struggling with the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) portion of the exam, you may wonder how to quickly improve your MBE score. And before we give you insight as to how to do this, it is important to note that it is difficult to quickly improve your MBE score. The MBE is a hard test which focuses on nuances of law. So many students struggle in making quick progress toward improving their MBE score. This does not mean it is impossible but it does mean that you will have to dedicate the time to making the progress.  The best way to improve your MBE score quickly is to study in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Here we give you the best strategies to quickly improve your MBE score using this strategy. 

How to Quickly Improve your MBE Score

1. Put away your MBE questions (for now).

Many students complete hundreds upon hundreds of practice MBE questions in efforts to see their MBE scores improve. Unfortunately, this is not the key to seeing MBE score improvement! We talk to hundreds of students every administration who fail the MBE even after completing 5,000 MBE questions! Quantity is not the answer!

The first thing you need to do if you want to quickly improve your MBE score is to put away your MBE questions (for now). You will be able to practice again soon (see step 4!).

2. Focus on memorizing the highly tested areas of MBE law.

If you want to quickly improve our MBE score and start making faster progress toward your goal, stop worrying about things like the Rule Against Perpetuities and present and future interests. Start focusing, instead, on the highly tested areas of law that will get you the most points. These include negligence, relevancy, hearsay, etc. You can review highly tested MBE topics here.

Dedicate your time to focusing primarily on these highly tested areas. That is one critical way to study smart for the MBE portion of the bar exam.

Note that it is not enough to just conceptually understand the law. If I ask you to tell me the difference between contribution or indemnity, or pure comparative v. partial comparative negligence, or joint-and-several v. several liability — you should be able to explain exactly what all of those concepts mean.  You will not get MBE questions right unless you have memorized the law.

If you have no idea how to memorize the law, check out our tips for memorizing your bar exam outlines here. You can also check out this post called “what is my bar exam learning style?” here.

Note: if you struggle to understand the law, then it is worth it to seek bar exam private tutoring. One way you may know if tutoring is right for you is if: (a) you are not able to explain concepts at all; (b) you are able to memorize the law but don’t really know what it means or how you would see it tested; or (c) you are scoring very low on MBE practice exams. If you fall into any of these three categories, then focused private tutoring may be the best way to see progress toward your goal.

3. Use actual official MBE questions when you practice.

After you feel comfortable with an area of law — meaning that you have memorized the elements of the rules — it is time to start practicing. First and foremost, you want to make sure you are using the BEST MBE questions that you can possibly use. If you want to make fast progress toward improving your MBE score, please use real MBE questions. In other words, STOP using questions invented by Barbri, Kaplan, or Themis. The real questions, released by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, are the absolute best source of bar exam questions. They most closely reflect the style and format of what you will see on the MBE. They are much better than questions invented by a commercial course.

If you ever hear stories of students who are completely surprised after walking out of the MBE due to how different the real test was in comparison with practice tests, most of those students did not use real MBE questions when they practice. To avoid being caught off guard, use real MBE questions!

You can purchase real MBE questions here.

 4. Slow down.

Now that you have the highly tested areas of law memorized and the best sources of MBE questions, it is time to get started — slowly!

Instead of racing through MBE questions, slow down! Figure out why you are answering questions incorrectly. If you find yourself racing through questions or trying to answer, say, 100 MBE questions a day (which is not the answer) then we highly recommend you check out this step-by-step guide on how to improve your MBE score.

While it may seem counterintuitive, slowing down and dissecting MBE questions is the fastest and best way to quickly improve your MBE score through practice.

5. Identify any “obvious” errors you are making. 

“Obvious” errors or procedural mistakes may be contributing to a lower MBE score. Sometimes, these errors significantly affect your MBE score. So, making sure you take care of any of these types of mistakes is one quick way to see progress toward your MBE goal.

Examples of MBE errors include:

• filling in the wrong bubble on your answer sheet
• running out of time on the MBE
• not reading the fact pattern closely enough
• not reading the answer choices closely enough
• suffering from fatigue on the MBE.

Using the method promulgated in this step-by-step guide on how to improve your MBE score will help you identify any errors that you may be making that are unrelated to lack of knowledge about the law or difficulty in application.

Looking for more (free) MBE assistance? Check out these posts!

• 5 steps to improve your MBE score 20-30 points
• 10 best MBE tips and tricks by a bar expert who scored 180 on the MBE

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