Completing MBE Practice Questions Online and On Paper

The MBE is probably more like what you've experienced in grade school than law school, at least, in terms of how you're marking your answers. That means you’re going to use a Number 2 pencil and bubble in your answers—one of four answers from A to D—on a paper answer sheet. Even if you’re using testing software on your own laptop, like Examplify, to type your MPTs and essays on Day 1 of the bar exam, you’re still going to use a pencil and a paper answer sheet for the multiple-choice questions on Day 2.

As you’re working through your commercial bar review course and completing multiple-choice questions, vary how you’re completing those questions.

Completing questions online within, for example, BARBRI’s MCQ Bank and its other online sets of questions will track your performance and provide you with data to identify your strengths and areas that will need additional review.

Completing questions on paper in the BARBRI multiple-choice book gives you the opportunity to mark up the questions and make annotations with a pencil, just like you should do on exam day.

Completing the BARBRI Simulated MBE, scheduled for the week of June 20, is an exercise you should absolutely do on paper. You have a separate BARBRI Simulated MBE book among your box of materials. Within that book are a couple of fill-in-the-bubble answer sheets that mimic what you will see on the bar exam. You should use these answer sheets as you complete the Simulated MBE. After the test, you will have the opportunity to transfer your marked-up bubbles from the paper answer sheets into your BARBRI account so that you can get a detailed performance report.

As simple as this may sound, you will want to give yourself practice filling out the paper answer sheets. In May 2017, for one of my final exams, students completed their final exam using a paper answer sheet to mimic the July bar exam.

Attached are pictures of two of those paper answer sheets. In the top picture, one student filled in Answer Choice “E” for Question 198. The problem? There was no Option “E” on the test. Remember—three are only four answer choices, Option “A” through Option “D.” Obviously, Answer Choice “E” was wrong.

In the bottom picture, another student, for Question 195 filled in Answer Choice “A” … and Answer Choice “C.” The student marked two answer choices for one question, which meant the student didn’t get credit for either response and answered this question incorrectly.

During the next several weeks, give yourself practice completing paper answer sheets. It’s not too surprising that both marking errors on the paper answer sheets in 2017 occurred towards the end of the exam when students might have been fatigued after sitting through about six hours and answering close to 200 multiple-choice questions at that point.