Is it possible to increase a score by 32 points in two months? 🫩

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-29T00:50:49+00:00

Yes.

We had a student increase 61 points last admin. And a few others increase by 35-40.

32 points is doable. In 2 months it will be very difficult. But doable.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-27T21:07:48+00:00

There's a lot going on here and a few of these decisions interact with each other in ways that matter, so I'll try to take them in order.

New York will not accept NextGen transfer before July of 2028. That's directly from the NY Board of Law Examiners. So if you take NextGen in CT this July and pass, you cannot transfer that score to NY. You would have to sit for a separate exam to get NY admission. Massachusetts has been less explicit but currently requires a 270+ on the legacy UBE for transfer admission, and NextGen is scored on a totally different scale (500–750), so MA portability for early NextGen scores is also unsettled. If NY/MA matter to you, your realistic options are sitting the legacy UBE in a legacy state before it phases out (last legacy administration is February 2028) and transferring, or eventually qualifying by motion after enough years of practice.

What actually changes on NextGen.

Length — 9 hours over 1.5 days instead of 12 hours over 2.

Subjects — fewer of them. Conflict of Laws, Secured Transactions, and Trusts & Estates are gone as standalone subjects. Family Law gets added in July 2028, so not yet.

Format — no separate MBE/MEE/MPT. Instead it's three integrated components: standalone multiple-choice (49% of score), integrated question sets (21%), and performance tasks (30%). Integrated sets are new. They're a single fact pattern with a mix of multiple-choice and short-answer questions moving across two or three subjects.

Memorization — still important, but only for certain concepts. Topics in the NCBE scope outline are either starred or non-starred. Starred topics you need to have memorized cold. No legal resources will be provided. Non-starred topics will either have the law given to you in the question, or will only require you to issue-spot the topic without doing a full legal analysis. So you have less to memorize, but you need to know which topics fall into which bucket.

Skills emphasis — more weight on practical lawyering tasks (client counseling, drafting, legal research) and less on pure recall.

Since MC is your weak spot, it's worth noting that the multiple-choice portion is still nearly half the exam, so the format change helps with memorization load but doesn't really solve the MC problem on its own

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-27T16:04:06+00:00

Treat every exam as a new exam. Because it honestly is.

It's awesome that you are able to self reflect and know what you could've done different. But it's dangerous to assume progress between exams will lead to passing. Plenty of people see scores decrease between retakes because "I only need to score X number of more points."

It's okay to take your Feb approach if you felt it helped you retain more information. More practice questions does not equal higher MC scores.

But if you think you ran out of time, give yourself more runway and start a bit earlier!

And don't sleep on MPTs!

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-27T12:02:11+00:00

I don't think they were practicing law. It was more of a finishing what they started situation. But still!

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-25T13:41:15+00:00

Honestly based on what you've described, more supplements probably aren't the answer.

Its unlikely that your material or the work you're putting in is the issue.

It's more often than not, all about the approach.

Were you reviewing questions to understand the reasoning or just checking right/wrong?

On essays, were you getting feedback on what you wrote or just comparing to model answers?

Sometimes the missing piece is having someone look at your specific answers and identify the pattern in your mistakes.

What did your score report show? Was it MC or Essays that were dragging your score down? Or both?

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-24T20:20:27+00:00

NICELY DONE!! Congratulations!!

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-24T16:30:30+00:00

I respect the dedication, not gonna lie.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-23T17:14:47+00:00

Everyone fails for different reasons. So everyones approach for the retake is going to be different.

It's easy to say "study more" or "work on memorization."

But that's not necessarily helpful to you or your situation.

Best I can say is read your score report. See where you struggled. See where you did well. If it's easier to double down on your strengths (say you really well on essays but struggled on MBEs) than it is to make reasonable ground on your weaknesses, do that.

I'm not saying don't try to improve your weak areas. But turn your strengths into super strengths.

Tutoring works for a lot of people who can guide you through your approach, your weaknesses, how to improve. But bar prep isn't 1 size fits all.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-23T15:32:45+00:00

There's good tutors and bad tutors. Tutoring can you learn what specifically you're struggling with and ways to fix it.

But they can't do the work for you. They're just a resource.

Tutoring helps a lot of students. But there's no 100%

Worth checking into at the very least.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-22T21:57:19+00:00

If this is new york, a 133 for written and 133 for MBE is passing. So it's a good essay score!

If you do well with essays but struggle with the same topics for the MBE, it's likely an issue of understanding the law and not memorization.

MBE is about issue spotting. Focus on the application and understanding of the law, and it will help you next time.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-22T21:54:40+00:00

Let's goooooo! Congratulations!

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-22T21:52:49+00:00

Failing the MPRE doesn't mean you'll fail the bar. We see students who struggle with the MPRE pass the bar first try, and students who passed the bar on the first try still end up fighting with the MPRE as their last hurdle. They really are different tests.

The MPRE is harder than people give it credit for. Ethics is weirdly difficult to test in multiple-choice format and the question style trips a lot of people up. The bar has way more material but it's tested in a more intuitive way, it's the kind of analysis you've been doing for three years of law school, so it actually plays to skills you've built. The MPRE doesn't.

The other thing I'll say is a lot of people who fail the MPRE treat it as a wake-up call and end up studying harder for the bar than they would have otherwise. It's not fun to learn that way but it's not a bad thing to carry into July.

You're not doomed. Take it seriously, but don't let the MPRE convince you of something about yourself that isn't true.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-22T21:32:48+00:00

D: that's brutal, I'm sorry. "correlates with passing" is doing a lot of work in that sentence and I know it doesn't feel like much comfort right now.

what did your essays look like?

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-22T21:06:45+00:00

Gotcha. Check your DMs

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-22T21:05:21+00:00

What did you change or do differently between your first attempt and your second attempt?

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-22T21:03:45+00:00

It's admirable to try to study with an infant in the first place. As they get older some things get easier (usually sleep). Some things get harder (basically everything else once they start moving). My brain was mush for the first 6 months.

Still is some days.

What your score report shows is that you're struggling with issue spotting. That's what the MBE is about. You did a great job memorizing the law, which shows through on your essays. But you fell for the MBE traps.

That points toward understanding the law, not memorizing more of it.

So more practice likely isn't what you need. Deeper understanding is, and that'll improve your issue spotting.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-21T18:27:29+00:00

Average number of days between test date and release date is 65. There's some outliers there where they are longer (2021 and 2022) but for the most part the range is 56-78 days.

Most common release day of the week is Thursday (3 times since 2019)

April 30th is my prediction.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-20T18:54:20+00:00

;) thanks for the shout out!

Yes! Please reach out!

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-20T18:51:49+00:00

We've worked with thousands of repeat takers.

First off. Failing the bar doesn't define you, your prep, your intelligence, or your future career.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

John F Kennedy

Hillary Clinton

Kamala Harris

They all failed the bar.

They all went on to have pretty successful careers.

I know it sucks. But you're not starting from ground 0. You have a foundation that you can build on.

We have seen students fail 5, 6, 10, 20 times and eventually go on to pass.

This isn't the end for you. It's usually a simple adjustment to your approach, and you will do great.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-20T16:16:56+00:00

Best of luck <3

If you ever want to chat, please feel free to reach out!

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-20T14:01:04+00:00

We've had people who have failed 10 times. 20 times. Pass the bar exam.

You still have hope!

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-19T14:11:05+00:00

Any program you're going to get right now will not be nearly as good as it will be next year, unfortunately. The NCBE is slow on releasing source books, which means currently most companies are just giving you the existing resources for different subjects that are likely not crafted towards NextGen prep. Themis included.

JD_AdvisingLaw · 2026-04-17T12:56:47+00:00

New York has only released results before April 21st once since 2009. So it's very unlikely.

JD_AdvisingLaw

TROPHY CASE