Monday, February 18, 2008

Trying not to freak out

Wow, what a long weekend.

I just posted my personal predictions for the D.C. essays in a comment, but thought it might be easier for people to see here:

After looking at what essays the NCBE had available last summer (D.C. used 6 of the 9, marked with *):
Contracts*
Civ Pro/Conflict of Law
Family Law*
Agency/Partnership*
Crim Law*
Property*
Commercial Paper
Trusts*
Corporations

My personal prediction is that the other three MBE topics will be in there
Torts
Evidence
Con Law

Plus there were some subjects that appeared on a very high number of the MEE the last few years that D.C. always seemed to choose, so maybe they'll pick some of them that they didn't hit last summer:
Wills
Secured Transactions

And I think Family Law is a fan favorite...it has been on every MEE since Feb 2004 and. D.C. has used it every time.

The usual hammering on the PMBR 3-Day took place this weekend. I did their full exam on Friday (I got a 90) and was close to the historical average 95). I marked my second choices in my question book and 29 of my second choices were correct. The questions were pretty damn hard (as PMBR said they would be...better to not waste any time on the "gimme" questions right now). If you add what PMBR suggests (36 points) got get you more on scale, it at least has me in the realm of possibility at a 126 scaled score, although I would hope I would do a bit higher than that since that is exactly the score I got last summer!)
I thought the review/lecture with Chris Fromm was pretty good. He also did the lecture for three of the six subjects in the six day. Very animated speaker that keeps you engaged. I took a lot of notes (all by hand for continued boot camp training for my essay hand) so hopefully some of those nuggets will stick in my mind.

Last night I went through and answered the 100 questions from recent MBEs in the MBE annotated preview 2006 through the NCBE.
I haven't read through all the explanations yet, but I scored it quick last night and I got 69/100, which the NCBE had a score report that extrapolated that score to a scaled score of 144 and gave scoring bands for each subject in relation to an average line. For the various subjects:
Contracts 15/18 (83%)
Crim Law 13/16 (81%)
Con Law 13/17 (76%)
Evidence 10/16 (63%)
Torts 10/17 (59%)
Property 8/16 (50%)

A few of those are close to what I've been trending so far, but a few are different. If I scored 69 on each half of the real MBE - that would be an amazing event. I'm a little wary of this as I wonder where those questions fall in the range of hardness from the NCBE. I'd say some of them felt like last summer, but not many of them were complete mindbenders and I remember quite a few of those from last July.

I think I've got my schedule put together for the last week of studying...lots of essay/MPT work now.
I'm going to do 20-30 mixed MBE's per day (just enough to stay fresh), in the "big ticket" areas (negligence, strict liability, hearsay, character/impeachment, homicide, First Amendment, equal protection/due process, mortgages and contracts formation) to try and strengthen those particular subjects.

1 comment:

thecalbaristhebaneofmyexistence said...

chris fromm~! i had him this past summer. he's very good.

i check your blog from time to time as a source of solace as i am also in dc studying for the bar.

good luck, we're at the finish!