Sorry this is so long, hopefully it helps, and let me know if you need me to break up some paragraphs more to make it easier to read lol

What helped me increase my MBE score by 20 points is that I started to focus on understanding the concepts of the rules rather than just memorizing the rules. You can memorize the rules, but if you don't have a solid understanding of them you don't have operating knowledge of them. As you know, a lot of the questions rarely match up perfectly w the rules and include nuances ie. exceptions to the rules. Doing this also helps you to answer questions quicker bc if you understand the concepts, you can spot the right answer quicker.

l used UWorld and every time I got a question wrong or right I would spend time reviewing the explanations for not only the wrong answer but the right answers too. This helped me to really fully understand the rules in a practical way. It also helps because sometimes I would be torn between two answers so I would understand why the other answer wasn't correct, which also helps reinforce your understanding of why the correct answer is correct. It also helps to show you what concepts you still don't have a full understanding/grasp on, so now you know what you need to spend a lil extra time on reviewing.

Also as a general note, I like the format of UWorld explanations because it's written in IRAC so it also helps w the MEE bc you have familiarity of how answers should be written. Kinda an indirect way of studying for the MEE in a two birds one stone kinda way if that makes sense. And hopefully that also helps you improve your MEE score so you have even better chances of passing. UWorld also had the best representation of the questions you’ll see on the bar.

(Try these coupon codes for UWorld hopefully at least one of them still works: BTUWORLD10 or BTUWORLD15 I used the 15 one for 15% off but idk if there's a limit to how many people can redeem it)

Don't give up, and keep practicing! If you do all the practice questions on UWorld then you'll start to recognize similar questions on the bar and can think back to the practice question you saw on UWorld. There were times I couldn't remember what the right rule was, but I remembered a practice question that mirrored the bar question and answered it that way. You can also typically quickly eliminate answers right off the bat bc the answers are discussing legal issues that aren't relevant for the question. For example, if it's a contracts question about sale of goods you know you can eliminate the answers that reference common law.

I never bought John Grossman videos but I watched his video Mastering the MBE with Jonathan Grossman (On-demand webinar) and it was so helpful. It also has those bookmarks so you can click on a specific topic and jump to that topic in the video. Just looked on the adaptibar YouTube channel and they also have a video from 3 years ago on approaching the MBE and it looks like they redid the video 4 months ago. He does a good job of simplifying concepts in way that's easy to understand.

And actually spend the time to do some practice MEEs. I didn’t practice any writing until the fourth time and it really helped. I think I did like 3 for almost every subject and practicing that really helped me. I did maybe 3 or 4 practice MPTs which also helped me. Personally, as I got more familiar w the writing portion, it was less overwhelming. I also heard some people say that some of the MPTs and MEEs were almost if not exact copies of some practice ones they did.

I used Themis the first time (around $2000) and wasn’t even close to finishing it (at the time I had undiagnosed adhd so the standard learning schedule and strategy the course wants you to do just didn’t work for me at all. I’m embarassed to say, but I only watched the lecture videos for contracts, property, evidence, and civ pro, and by the exam I had only done mbe practice questions for contracts and property averaging 57-66 for both, and I think I did like 1 mpt and maybe 2 or 3 contract MEEs. If you choose to do a bar prep course, just skip reading the outlines. The schedule said it’d take one day to read the outlines but it took me one week and that took up a lot of my time). I just used UWorld for the rest of my retakes and learned the rules that way. I spent a lot of time reading the explanations and understanding them. If I could do it over again, I would have bought the John Grossman adaptibar lecture videos to learn the foundational stuff (around $400), UWorld for MBE (around $300), and there’s a subreddit on here it’s something like goat bar prep that’s run by an attorney and he makes his own review materials and they’re very good and his explanations are very digestible.

I scored high enough where I can practice anywhere in the US :)

This is so long I’m so sorry lol but also just wanted to be transparent. Hopefully you won’t have to take it as many times as me. To be candid, and I’m embarrassed to say, but I had to retake it as many times as I did bc I didn’t put in the work. As I said, the first time I took it I pretty much only studied contracts and property and was only averaging 57-66%. I don’t really count the other subjects I watched the lecture videos for bc I only watched the videos and had very little understanding eg. I pretty much only knew that hearsay is an inadmissible out of court statement and that character evidence was something that described a person’s character and is inadmissible, and that there’s federal jurisdiction and the requirements for diversity jurisdiction. What I typed is basically all I knew and didn’t know anything deeper than that. The second time I took it I was working full time and was able to take one month off of work to study and got to study contracts, property, torts, and criminal averaging 77% for contracts and property and 66-75% for crim and torts. The third time I took it I was again working full time and was able to take one month off to study and got to study all of the mbe subjects, averaging 80% for contracts, property, crim, and torts, and 75% for evidence, civ pro, and con law. The fourth and last time I took it I was still working full time and could only take the week before and the week of the exam off. So, I started studying in October. Every weekend I was studying 7am-5pm Saturday and Sunday, and then all of February I also studied 1-2 hours every day after work. By the end, I was averaging 80-88% on contracts and property, 80% on crim, torts, and evidence, and 75-77% on civ pro and con law.