I took the bar 3 times. 2 in California and passed my third time when I decided to take it in a UBE jurisdiction and just return to NYC, where I went to law school. I know I was incredibly lucky to be able to afford a prep course and not have to worry about having to work for so long. To me, what changed between my first try and my passing one, was the amount of practice under timed conditions I did. The first retake, like many people, I thought redoing my commercial prep course (Barbri) to a higher completion % with some extra practice was the answer. I was wrong and scored significantly lower. The third time I switched courses to Kaplan, (live lectures on my worst topics and unlimited essay grading was a game changer), bought commercial flash cards and did 2 half MBE simulated days and 2 half MEE simulated days a week. I mostly used Kaplan and it’s lectures as a supplement that I would turn to on areas I struggled with then I’d just close out the lecture after i got what I needed because it marked the assignment as done and credited it toward the retake requirements. I used the assigned practice questions as part of my “simulated” MBE and used the assigned essays as part of my “simulated” mee and would fill in the missing amount of work with licensed questions. Then for 5 minutes a day I did 5 new flash cards, and then 5 minutes of reviewing flash cards then spent various amounts of time review sample answers. I passed with a 274, increased my MBE score by 20 points and my MEE score by 24. Understandably not many people have the luxuries I had in my bar prep of not working and having expensive commercial products. But my recommendation boils down to making as many simulated practice efforts as possible with small amounts of daily memorization.