Time Remaining Shouldn’t Be a Surprise
I’m not a socc--, uh, “football” fan. Living in Dayton, Ohio, I still haven’t attended an FC Cincinnati or Columbus Crew game. But I’m following each game of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and I’ve cleared my Saturday morning to watch the United States Men’s National Team take on the Netherlands in the Round of 16 knockout stage.
But here’s what I don’t understand about football.
A typical football game is 90-minutes of regulation play divided into two 45-minute halves. But unlike American football and most other sporting competitions, the in-stadium clock in a football match doesn’t indicate the actual time remaining.
In football, the referee keeps the time on the field and can add time for game delays resulting from dead balls, injuries, substitutions, video assistant referee (VAR) reviews, and post-goal celebrations. So, when the in-stadium clock reaches 45 minutes to signal halftime or 90 minutes to end the game, that might not be halftime or the end of the match. And it usually isn’t.
There’s a fourth official on the sideline whose responsibility is to raise an electronic board at the end of both halves to signal additional minutes of play.
The halves might continue for a couple additional minutes or more. In the case of England’s recent 6-2 win over Iran, it was much, much more. Stoppage time in that game totaled 27 minutes of additional play—with 14 minutes and eight seconds added at the end of the first half and another 13 minutes and eight seconds added at the end of the second. That’s almost 33% more game time!
Can you imagine not knowing how many minutes or questions you have remaining while taking the bar exam!
You go into the exam preparing to have three hours to complete 100 multiple-choice questions in the morning and another three hours to complete another set of 100 questions in the afternoon.
You plan to manage your time appropriately so that you complete the exam on time. You don’t want to be told by the exam proctor at the end of the three-hour testing block that—surprise!—you actually have 15 additional minutes. Had you known that information from the get-go, you might have spent a little longer on that lengthy contract formation question. Or worse, upon hearing that you have 15 additional minutes, you might use those additional minutes to go back to change some of your answers—you know, to questions that you actually answered correctly originally. Argh!
Thankfully, that’s not the case on the bar exam, at least absent some unforeseen circumstances like power outages, tornado warnings, and earthquakes. (In California, on the 2008 July bar exam, when a magnitude 5.4 earthquake hit testing centers, some examinees at testing locations were given an extra five minutes to finish while examinees at other locations weren’t provided the same extension.)
Absent unforeseen circumstances, expect to have approximately 1.8 minutes to answer each MBE question. Don’t go too fast. Don’t go too slow. Find that Goldilocks middle ground.
When doing small sets of practice questions, complete them in sets of 17 or 18, and time yourself at 30 minutes. When doing longer, simulated 100-question sets, consider writing “30 minutes” next to Question 17, “60 minutes” next to Question 33, “90 minutes” next to Question 50, and so on. Give yourself time markers where you should be after each 17 questions. Break that big 100-question exam into smaller 17-question chunks. That way, you know whether you need to speed up or slow down throughout the exam in smaller adjustments (which is less stressful) rather than finding yourself making that decision until the end (which can be more stressful and taxing on the mind and body).
If you find that Goldilocks middle ground, then you’ll complete each MBE section on the day of the bar exam on time. It’s much better to spend time on the front-end trying to reach your final answer to every question rather than going through questions quickly with the strategy of giving yourself time at the end to re-evaluate your answer choices. Nothing good usually results from second-guessing yourself. After all, if you systematically problem-solved your way through a question the first time, doing it again at the end of the test will either confirm your answer or potentially cause you to change an originally correct answer to a wrong response. Yes, you know that happens a lot! So just don’t do it.
Also, in many jurisdictions, even if you finish early, you’re not permitted to leave the testing room before time is called. So be as methodical as you can as you initially work through each question the first—and only—time.
