How Doreen Passed One of the HARDEST California Bar Exams (33.9% Pass Rate)

The 2022 February California Bar Exam was a tough one.

The typical average raw written score needed to be on track to pass hovered around 60-62 points in past California exams that required a 1390 scaled score.

The raw written score needed to be on track to pass in 2022 February was an average of 62.78 points!

But Doreen managed to pass the 2022 February California Bar Exam…

  • Unexpected to her (“I don’t think I passed this bar … just [being] realistic” “I will probably take it again in July, and I will be using your methods and materials again” “I was completely prepared to treat it like a practice exam, learn from my mistakes, etc.”)
  • Even though essays were the bane of her existence, and
  • Even though she only had 6 weeks of preparation.

How did she do it? Her full story and takeaways below…

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How do Magicsheets and Approsheets fit into your other bar exam study materials?

There are a LOT of study supplements, resources, and outlines for bar prep. As time passes, more and more get added to your potential repertoire.

Sometimes, the sheer overwhelm causes bar takers to load up on all sorts of materials, attend every workshop, DM everyone offering something — spreading themselves so thin that they end up not using any of it!

The materials collect digital dust, and bar takers end up restarting at square one, exhausted. But “the great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” (Herbert Spencer)

I, too, offer study materials for the California Bar Exam and the Uniform Bar Exam. Here’s my answer to questions about them, including HOW to use them. This will be useful whether or not you use my material.

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Should you forget about essays and just focus on the MBE (“auto-pass” with the MBE)?

No, this approach has a few potential inaccuracies and dangers.

Below are four of the dangers and a better approach to take instead if you want to prioritize a few areas.

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Which MBE Supplements Should You Get?

There are many MBE supplements out there, although only a few come to mind as the leaders of the space: AdaptiBar, UWorld, and the Strategies & Tactics for the MBE book.

To decide which one(s) you may like, I condensed some of my key strategies for the MBE and looked into which resources could help you hit them all:

  1. Quality of review (quantity without sacrificing the learning)
  2. Track performance by subject and topic
  3. Primarily focus on real questions, but also bring in simulated questions to grind problem areas

Here are the options and what you should consider in choosing them:

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Biggest Areas of the MBE to Focus On (Highly Tested Topics)

The MBE isn’t just a mixed bag of questions. It’s actually not even an evenly distributed bag of questions.

There are some topics that are tested disproportionately and more frequently on the MBE! Not all questions are equally important.

💡 There are just THREE highest-priority topics…

💡 These top 3 tested topics EACH account for over a whopping 7% of your score (over 21% total)!

💡 What can you do with the lower-priority topics?

But these takeaways are not that obvious if you simply skim through the NCBE’s subject matter outline. The language isn’t as clear or intuitive. Let’s break this down into charts so we can visualize it better.

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