Different Takes on the Bear in the Woods

It’s perhaps the National Park Service's most popular tweet ever.

To raise awareness on bear safety, the National Park Service recently tweeted out the following: "If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down … even if you feel the friendship has run its course.”

That tweet went viral, racking up 9.6 million views, more than 26.8K retweets, and more than 182,000 likes, and more than 2K comments as of this morning.

The National Park Service used the lighthearted joke to grab the attention of its social media followers before turning to the more serious discussion of bear safety tips.

"Seeing a bear in the wild is a special treat for any visitor to a national park," the National Park Service subsequently tweeted. "While it is an exciting moment, it is important to remember that bears in national parks are wild and can be dangerous."

What does a bear in the forest have to do with bar preparation?

Check out the article, “Keys to Success on the Bar Exam,” in the 2019 Special Edition of The National Jurist magazine.

The article features representatives from three bar review companies—BARBRI, Kaplan Bar Review, and BarMax—who provide various tips and advice on tackling the bar exam.

Here’s one piece of advice in The National Jurist article from Mike Sims, president of BABBRI, and that discusses a bear in the forest:

Everyone knows the bar exam is a pass/fail exam. But have you taken the time to think about what that phrase means for you and your bar study? The NCBE publishes score distributions for the MBE. (www.ncbex.org/statistics-and-research/statistics/mbe-statistics/) Each year, the distribution of scores fall into a bell curve with a mean scaled score of about 140 out of 200. Considering that the passing score for the MBE in many jurisdictions is about a scaled 135, the critical thing to measure when you are studying MBE practice questions is not how many questions you are getting right but how you are doing relative to everyone else. In other words, you want to know where you fall on that bell curve.

The best way to think about this is to remember the old joke about two hunters who came upon a bear. They were getting ready to run when one sat down and started changing from boots to running shoes. “You can’t outrun a bear,” his buddy yelled. “Don’t have to outrun the bear,” he replied. “I just have to outrun you.”

Admittedly, that is a cruel way of thinking about it, but it is the best way to think about studying for the bar exam. In law school you’ve been conditioned to think about your grade in terms of the percentage you got correct: “I got a 9 out of 10, or a 90 percent on a test.” An “A” is irrelevant on the pass/fail bar exam. Instead, you need to make sure you are doing well enough, in enough areas, so that you pass. You do not have to outrun everyone. You just need to outrun the bottom 20 to 30 percent, or maybe 40 percent, of other people studying for the exam.

Rather than focusing on what percentage of practice questions you get right, focus on how you are doing relative to everyone else. This is your percentile ranking. If you are in the 30th to 40th percentile or higher, that means you are doing better than 30 to 40 percent of other takers in that subject. Most importantly, that means you are on track to pass.

You can read the full The National Jurist article here.