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Passing the NY Bar After 4 Failures and a Forced Year Off

“T” passed the New York Bar Exam on her 5th try. Her journey had ups and downs (mostly downs):

  • Her 4th attempt scored lower than her 3rd. She came 5 points short of passing, then went backward.
  • The NY BOLE benched her from the next exam and made her wait a full year for her next attempt.
  • She watched her dad get really sick during her year off.

But that year became the thing that made her 5th and last time work.

💬 “I can’t believe I’m writing this email. I just found out I passed the NY bar exam! Honestly feels like a dream. My parents cried :)”

It wasn’t because she found a new course or schedule or other tactical minutiae. Those are just products. Which tool you use doesn’t matter if the user can’t wield it effectively.

If all you do is consume the product (which traditional commercial prep courses are designed for), that’s like eating a bunch of protein because you heard it’s good. And then you end up in an even bigger caloric surplus because you overate and didn’t work out to give the protein something to do.

She passed because she changed her approach. She started digesting what she consumed.

What changes when you stop being a tryhard and start being an overachiever?

How do you start thinking when you stop the barebones “I just need a few more points” mentality?

What happens when you show up again and again?

T was a different person altogether by the time she walked into the exam room for the 5th time.

The scariest thing about humans as predator is that they keep following and hunting their prey until it gives up from exhaustion.

Table of Contents
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Quick stats

  • Jurisdiction: New York (UBE)
  • Attempts: 5
  • Score progression: 261 (3rd attempt), 245 (4th attempt), pass (5th attempt)
  • Strength: Memorization
  • Weakness: Essays
  • Unique circumstances: Anxiety attacks, ailing family member

💬 “It did scare me when I would sometimes blank, but I again tried to shift my perspective and remember that this is where the learning happens.”

Resources T used to pass the New York UBE

Magicsheets and Approsheets

Passer’s Playbook

AdaptiBar MBE Simulator (switched from UWorld for attempt 5)

  • Use promo code here for 10% off your entire cart

Emanuel’s Strategies & Tactics for the MBE

Critical Pass flashcards

MTYLT blog (you’re reading it)

MTYLT YouTube videos

❌ Before (attempts 1-4):

  • Commercial bar prep course didn’t fit her learning style
  • Memorized first
  • “I just need a few more points” bare minimum mentality
  • Built rigid schedules with too many tasks per day she couldn’t actually finish
  • Forgot subjects between cycles
  • No wellness or anxiety management
  • Panic crammed in the last 2 weeks

✅ After (attempt 5):

  • Built her own flexible schedule with realistic task counts (2-3 substantive tasks per day)
  • Jumped into MBE questions early to learn from being wrong
  • Shifted to a “score above the minimum” mentality
  • Used sample answers as feedback throughout prep
  • Multiple review cycles for sustained knowledge accrual
  • Stress and anxiety management instead of forcing through

What are some big takeaways to get to the AFTER in T’s fifth and final attempt?

1) Eat and then digest

For T’s first four attempts, she did what felt productive. She memorized the Magicsheets. She read the rules. She “studied.” Then she went into the questions and got destroyed.

💡 Memorization, familiarity, and recognition alone aren’t the goal.

Don’t go for mere recognition of rules. Go for recognition of fact patterns and RECALL of rules.

This is why bar takers plateau. They read more, re-watch lectures, re-read notes, re-outline. Movement gets confused with progress…until they can’t ignore it anymore.

💬 “I realized that even though I read so many of your blogs, I really hadn’t digested enough of your materials and the wisdom you shared in your blogs. I wanted to get better at writing essays, become a wiz at multiple choice, and be a bar exam machine by the time the exam rolled around. I knew that if this was going to be it, I really had to change everything.”

For attempt 5, she flipped it. She jumped straight into MBE questions before she had everything memorized. She let herself get questions wrong, and she paid attention to why.

💬 “This time I jumped into the deep end with questions and actually feel like I’m learning by getting questions wrong. I like this approach better than trying to memorize everything before attempting questions.”
💬 “I felt like I was really understanding the material with the videos which were concise and clear. However, I still felt like I didn’t have a lot of the details and rules down.”

For T’s fifth attempt, she realized she needed to “eat and then digest.” Sit with the rules and issues (most people stay here). Attempt to use it. Get it wrong. Figure out why. Apply it again.

💬 “I think the biggest issue is that I was consuming instead of ‘eating and then digesting.’ I had recently come back from a trip, and I think I let it scare me that I only had 8 weeks to study so I focused on consuming and ‘studying’ all the details from the Magicsheets.”

2) Don’t chase the bare minimum (aim past it)

If you’re asking questions like

“How many MBEs do I need to do to pass?”
“How much of the course should I complete?”
“How many hours do I need to study?”

The answer for someone like that is: as many as possible.

Otherwise, you’re looking to get away with the bare minimum. You might as well show up to the counter with a punch card and ask for one license please. Complain about how the bar doesn’t test “minimum competence” all you want, but minimum competence doesn’t mean the bare minimum.

You’re probably going to end up retaking the exam until you realize that.

Before attempt 5, T had the goal of getting a few more points. Just enough to clear the bar.

“Few more points” is dangerous because it shrinks your effort to fit the minimum. You get comfortable once you feel like you’re “close enough.” And then exam day variance does its thing, your nerves do theirs, and your performance drops to 70%.

💡 On the actual exam, expect to be about 70% as good as your top condition. I’m not saying you will be, but account for that possibility. It’s a real phenomenon.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.”

T flagged this herself before she even started studying for attempt 5. She had been thinking about it during her year off.

💬 “I want to get out of the ‘I just need a few more points’ mentality, so that I can give it my all and start scoring above the minimum.”
💬 “I’m hoping that the use of the new materials this time and a more realistic study schedule will help me get past the ‘barely passing range’ that I was in last time.”

This showed up when she started studying earlier. She did 339 AdaptiBar questions between October and December (“early start” territory). She designed her schedule to ramp up to 30 MBE questions per day. She added MPT practice on weekends. She built in 2 essays a day to attack what scared her most.

You have to overshoot to hit the target. She was aiming past her pass score of 266.

By the time February rolled around, she said something she had never said before any other attempt:

💬 “Every time I have taken this exam, I always said ‘I wish I had more time/2 weeks more.’ However, this time, I feel more confident that I can accomplish a lot in these last 2 weeks without saying that.”

When you’re aiming for the minimum, two weeks always feels short because you’re always behind your own bare-minimum standard. When you’re aiming past the minimum, you’ve already reached minimum competence before you’ve realized it.

Shoot for the moon. You WILL miss on test day, but you’ll land among the stars.

3) Remember where the learning happens

You sit down to do 30 MBE questions, you get 17 right, and your brain sees those 13 wrong as evidence you’re not ready (before crashing out on Reddit about it).

The 13 you got wrong are the entire point of testing yourself with the 30.

Studying the questions you got wrong (and even the ones you got right) is where the actual learning happens. The ones you breezed through were already in the bag.

💬 “I think I’m finally at the place where I’m getting things wrong and learning from it.”
💬 “This time I jumped into the deep end with questions and actually feel like I’m learning by getting questions wrong.”

💬 “I was a little more scared of the essays this time, and I could feel it while practicing. One day, I decided that I seriously need to learn this essay cooking thing. So I read all your blogs on the topic and finally decided to try it. At first it was tough, but I could feel it getting better as I did more. Eventually, I was quick with it. It did scare me when I would sometimes blank, but I again tried to shift my perspective and remember that this is where the learning happens.”

She had to keep reminding herself of this repeatedly. The natural reaction to getting questions wrong is to feel stupid, panic, and freeze. Feeling stupid is part of the process.

What are you doing if you’re already getting everything right?

T’s MBE percentage climbed from the low 50s to the high 60s by the time she was a month out. She got better at essays despite essays scaring her.

Reviewing your work is where the learning actually happens. The questions force you to apply what you think you know. Then you find out what you actually understand versus what you only recognize.

By exam day, she had already trained for it by patching up the holes.

💬 “On game day, I was very relaxed. I kept thinking positive, breathing, and relaxing my mind. MPTs went well this time because I actually practiced them this time and had a plan. I worked hard on the MEEs. There were some where it felt like I wrote less, and although that scared me a bit, I tried to keep thinking positively. For MBEs, I was seriously ready to attack and get it done. I could feel myself getting answers correct and that gave me confidence to keep going.”

The exam rewards people who already found the holes in their understanding. Have the courage to make mistakes now.

4) Build a schedule you can actually finish

T’s old habit: She had built schedules with too many tasks, then watched the day end with most of them un-crossed-off.

She knew this was happening. She kept doing it anyway because more tasks felt like more effort. But singing louder doesn’t fix being off key.

💬 “Although I’m not the best at sticking to a schedule (I often felt like I was only able to cross off 2 or 3 tasks per day because I was taking too long with each task), I like the organization it creates and it should be easier to get everything done if I start earlier.”

If your container holds 6 tasks but you only have 3 tasks of capacity per day, every day ends with you feeling like you failed.

💡 The sample schedules in Passer’s Playbook suggest minimum numbers.

Why?

It’s a flexible, living document. A minimum number conforms to your needs (you can add more if you need (you probably should)).

And importantly, at least as much review time should be allocated as practice time. Most people think 30 MBE questions = 1 hour, when it’s 2 hours at the very least when accounting for the most meaningful part of your prep (cross-referencing outlines and understanding explanations), distractions, rest, etc.

T fixed this for attempt 5.

When she found that doing 3 essays was too much, she scaled it down to 2 essays. Then she moved the previous day’s MBE review to the next morning before the new set. The daysended with everything done.

💬 “At first, I was finding it hard to do the 30 MBE questions, review it on the same day, and then thoroughly do 3 essays. So I am trying to do the 30 MBE, study Magicsheets, and then do at least 2 essays per day. Then, the next day I review the 30 MBE from the prior day before I take a break and do the next set for the day. I’m feeling better this time around since I jumped into the MBE early, and I’m finding that I’m getting to spend more time with the Magicsheets.”

But remember that the point of a schedule is to keep you on track. It’s just another tool, not a hard requirement or something to design around.

(T’s actual schedule can be found as an example in Passer’s Playbook btw.)

5) Mental + emotional management

The stakes were stacked for T.

Months into prep for attempt 5, T started getting anxiety attacks. They got scary, and she had to take a break.

💬 “I started getting anxiety attacks. It really scared me, and I knew that I had to take a pause because there’s no way that I could get back to studying without beating it first.”

During T’s forced year off, her dad got really sick. By the time anxiety attacks started during prep, T was studying with a year of weight behind her.

💬 “Even while he was having such a hard time, he was still worrying about me not being financially independent yet. That really hit home. After he got better, I knew there was no way I could let another exam pass without passing. There were so many things I had planned that felt like they were put on hold: the in-house career I wanted, financial independence, even vacations which we had looked forward to for so long. That year taught me so much.”

She looked for ways to address the anxiety.

💬 “I started to look at dancing, yoga, pranayama, and the positive outlook as preparing my body and mind for the exam.”
💬 “I started adding a lot of breathing techniques that helped me substantially (it’s called Pranayama) and it is probably the reason I was able to be so calm this time around. It truly changed my life. Whenever I would feel stressed, I would stop studying and do the breathing techniques. It even helped me get a good night’s sleep every night.”

The bar exam is mental, emotional, and physical.

If your body is in a stress response, your brain’s recall is compromised. If you’ve ever been heartbroken, you know hard it is to focus on anything else.

Whatever you decide to do, if you’re panicking and getting anxious, just grinding forward might not help much.

Manage your mind. Organize your emotions. “The mind is 50% of the exam.”

6) Be the dean of your own studies

Bar prep is personal. Pranayama worked for T. You might take more walks or go to the gym (or my favorite, go the f🌕k to sleep).

In fact, this is the idea that many passers quote back to me as the big reason they passed.

💬 “I took ‘be the dean of your own studies’ very seriously.”

T treated the schedule, my blog posts and videos, and her resources as inputs. But she decided what worked, what didn’t, and adjusted week to week.

💬 “There were times when my scores would fluctuate, so I would reassess and alter my strategy. For example, I would spend more time reviewing that day and less essays, or more time reviewing the Magicsheets before going back to the MBEs. I would also do 20 MBEs in that topic itself.”

When Civ Pro was tanking her score, she added Emanuel’s Strategies & Tactics and ran 50 Civ Pro questions over a few days to bring it up.

💬 “I’m at 57.2% overall, and I am pretty much getting between 60% and 70% on my daily sets. I still feel like I need some doubling down on certain subjects, like Civ Pro, so I decided to use the Emmanuel supplement for that. I plan to read the section and do approximately 50 Civ Pro questions over the next few days so that I can increase my score (right now it’s 45.3% on AdaptiBar, the lowest of all my subjects).”

The plan is yours to build and adjust. If you’re waiting for someone to hand you the perfect plan, you’re going to be waiting for a long time (you’re certainly not going to get it from a big box course lmao).

Actually that goes for everything in your prep: which course (if any), which supplements, which schedule, which mental management techniques, which weak subjects to attack and patch up, which week you take off.

Only you can prevent forest fires. You’re the dean of your own studies.

Full story

T email screenshots
Email thread 1 (Nov 2024)
Email thread 2 (Apr 2025 – Feb 2026)
Passing email (Apr 2026)

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