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Barbri Essay Graders

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How accurate are Barbri essay graders?

Every administration, many students ask, “How accurate are Barbri essay graders?” or “How accurate are the Kaplan essay graders?”

Students wonder if the scores they receive from these essay graders are an accurate reflection of how they will do on the bar exam.  The answer I always tell them is, “not necessarily.”

I had a student for a recent bar exam, who agreed to let me share her scores (although her name will remain confidential). This student received several scores of 4 (a passing grade was 10)from Barbri graders as well as quite low scores from Kaplan graders. She did not get a score above a 7 (a passing score) from Barbri or Kaplan graders. However, she did receive a passing score on her actual bar exam.

In fact, on the essay portion of her actual bar exam, she received 14 points higher than needed to obtain a passing score. Her essay score included four scores of 10, two scores of 9, three scores of 8, one score of 7, two 6’s, two 5’s, and a 4.

This is not to say that Barbri or Kaplan graders are “bad”. Some of them are fantastic and provide great feedback. The problem seems to be that some are quite picky and will give low scores if an essay is not perfect. Others hand out 9’s and 10’s like it’s their job. How do you know which essay graders to trust and which scores to rely on?

There are a few approaches you can take.

Approach #1: don’t rely on the Barbri graders—rely on yourself

The best feedback you can get is the feedback you give yourself. Why anxiously wait for a score given by a Barbri or Kaplan grader? Instead, give yourself feedback. (Many states provide past bar exam questions and the model answers for review. If you are in a MEE state, these are all available on the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ website. Check to see what your state does.)

How do you give yourself feedback?

After you answer a question, spend a long time comparing it to the model answer. What did you answer well? Did you spot all of the issues? Did you make correct rule statements? Did you organize your answer in a similar manner to the model answer?

You generally will not be expected to know case names or rule numbers (which all might be in the model answers). Instead focus on whether you spotted the issues, stated the correct rules, analyzed them accurately, and arrived at correct conclusions.

When you compare your answer to the model answer, do not just read the model answer and then move on. Instead, when you read the model answer, mark up your own answer (in a different colored font or different colored pen) as if you were a grader . This will help you (a) improve your essay writing techniques, (b) give you a better idea of what kind of score you will actually get on the bar exam, and (c) help you get into the mind of a grader.

When you go into the exam, you will no longer be writing essays as if you were a student – you will be writing essays as though you were a grader.  You will know what kinds of essays a grader wants to see and you will write organized essays that make it easy for the grader to give you points. This is all because you were a grader for your own essays during the duration of bar exam preparation.  I advise all of my students grade their own essays during bar exam preparation because of the enormous benefits it has.

Note that this is not to say that you should not give essays to Barbri or Kaplan to grade. Nor is it to say that you should completely ignore feedback from Babri or Kaplan graders (See Approach #2 below, where we advise just the opposite!). On the contrary, it can be helpful to have a second set of eyes to give objective feedback. We advise that you send some essays into your bar review course to see if they offer you any helpful feedback or if they catch anything you missed.

The point of this tip is that you will not have to ponder the question “How accurate are Barbri essay graders?” because you will have an idea of you are doing based on your own feedback.

Approach #2: look at the feedback given by Barbri and Kaplan graders as a potential source of valuable data

Sometimes Barbri and Kaplan graders give good feedback that goes ignored. Feedback goes ignored for one of two reasons: First, students see their scores and automatically ignore the feedback. Second, some students get defensive as soon as someone writes a comment on an essay they were sure they should have gotten a perfect score on.

If you find yourself barely reading the feedback given by the graders, step back for a minute. Look at it objectively. Instead of focusing on the number and instead of taking the feedback as a statement of how you write or how well you know the information, look at it as data that you really may be able to use. Is there anything useful you can extract from it? Do you constantly hear the same feedback (“Make better rule statements.” “Arrive at a conclusion.” etc). If you are able to take a step back from it, you may be able to look at it more objectively and get something out of it.

Still unsure?

If you are really unsure as to how you are doing on your essays, feel free to contact us and check out our bar exam essay feedback services. We provide essay feedback for students all of the time. We can tell you the kinds of scores you can expect to receive as well as where there is room for improvement. We read hundreds of essays every bar exam and we are realistic about the scores that you can expect to receive on your actual bar exam.

If you have a comment or question, please do not hesitate to contact us!

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Five frequently asked questions about BARBRI Bar Review

By Mike Sims, BARBRI President

Year after year, tens of thousands of graduating students trust BARBRI for their bar exam preparation. As they are making their bar prep choice, there are a few questions that continue to come up. Below are five of our most frequently asked questions about BARBRI Bar Review. 

1) Is the BARBRI course flexible?

The short answer is yes, the BARBRI Bar Review course is very flexible.

We’ve mastered the bar exam over the past 50+ years and want to help you prepare for exam day success with a smart bar prep Personal Study Plan (PSP) powered by ISAAC. ISAAC is BARBRI’s adaptive, AI-based tool that personalizes and optimizes your study for the bar from day 1 based on your specific learning needs.

ISAAC knows what’s most likely to be tested on your bar exam (what’s most important) and how much time is remaining until you take your bar exam. It also gets to know you to improve your chance of scoring more points and passing.

When you first access your PSP, you will be prompted to select your start date and customize your schedule. You may select days of the week you’d like to regularly study as well as any specific days you know you need to take off. Each week, you may study the specific days, hours per day and time of day that works best for your schedule. You get the ultimate curated bar prep experience.

Our experience has shown that students are most successful when they spread their studies over a minimum of 8-10 weeks and invest a good amount of time each week studying. Students who begin their studies earlier will be able to study fewer hours per day, fewer days per week and/or take more days off throughout their course .

The best way to make sure you are studying the right things at the right time is by following the personal recommendations in your PSP. Everything ISAAC assigns is positively correlated to passing your bar exam. If you take a day off, spend less time studying one day or more time on another, ISAAC constantly and automatically adjusts your PSP as you work. Whether you’re on track, working ahead or falling a bit behind, ISAAC makes sure you will get the most points possible.  Learn more about ISAAC .

You also have the opportunity to participate in MyBARBRI Connect. MyBARBRI Connect allows you to study online, but not alone. Most BARBRI Bar Review course options allow you to collaborate virtually with a strategies group and coach from anywhere in the world.

2) How many graded essays are included?

The short, sweet answer is that most BARBRI bar prep options include an unlimited number of reviewed essays.

Now for the more complicated answer. While most BARBRI options offer unlimited reviews, unlimited essay reviewing/grading alone is not the best way to write high scoring essays. An unguided and purely “unlimited” essay grading system can actually stunt your progress.

During bar study, your goal is to learn to write the best bar exam essays possible, as quickly as possible. And writing essays for the bar exam is very different than writing essays for law school. In our 50+ years guiding students, we’ve seen that submitting practice essay after essay with no initial guidance and delayed feedback reinforces bad habits and wastes your time.

For this reason, a purely “unlimited” essay grading system can actually stunt your progress. We don’t want that for our students. BARBRI has a better answer in our online Essay Architect.

When you use the online Essay Architect writing tool, you get immediate feedback to help you quickly build exam writing skills. Then, we assign essays for you to self-grade. Why? Because stats show us that this is one of the most effective ways to learn and achieve better bar exam scores.

When it’s time to submit essays for review, you’ll get expert feedback from different reviewers so you’re always getting a more rounded view and comprehensive feedback. Again, all leading to more confidence, and points, on the bar exam.

3) How many MBE practice questions does BARBRI provide? Are they “real” released MBE questions?

The short answer: All BARBRI students have access to a minimum of 5,500 multiple-choice questions throughout their BARBRI Bar Review course that simulate what’s encountered on exam day. 

ISAAC curates and assigns multiple-choice practice questions from a 2,500+ question bank. (ISAAC drives your BARBRI bar prep course and creates your Personal Study Plan, or PSP). In addition to the multiple-choice questions ISAAC curates, you’ll also have access to a 3,000+ multiple-choice question BARBRI MCQ Bank. The MCQ Bank provides extra practice in areas in which you feel a little less confident. 

When it comes to “real” MBE questions released by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), most  BARBRI bar prep options  include an MBE final prep comprised of 100 “real” MBE questions. That’s a lot. But when it’s all said and done, we actually think there’s a better question to be asked.

As with many things, it’s not just the quantity that matters. For MBE practice questions, it’s the quality and the methodology that matters. The order, approach and specific bar exam practice questions you answer are more important than hitting a certain number of questions. This is such an important topic, that we have  another entire blog dedicated to it .

Additionally, focusing too heavily on NCBE released MBE questions is how some bar preppers misuse precious, limited study time. We have another  blog on this topic, too .

4) Do bar exam results really fall on a curve? Why should I care?

Even after years of published MBE results and graphs, there are still people who insist that bar exam results do not fall into a bell curve. For those who do believe what they see, there are still many who feel that this fact is not meaningful. If anyone ever tries to convince you of either of these things, please feel free to tell them they’re wrong.

Check out the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) National Scaled Score Distribution charts published by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) for  2020 ,  2021  and  2022 . MBE score results consistently fall into a bell curve pattern  every single bar exam administration .

We believe this frequently asked question about BARBRI provides insight into our student preparation. Since BARBRI prepares the vast majority of law school graduates every year, the BARBRI Simulated MBE with Pass Predictor is the best way to know where you are on the curve before you sit for the exam.

The best bar exam passing strategy starts by understanding the bar exam curve and by tracking your percentile rank during bar prep. Getting just a few additional points can really tip you into the “passing zone” and BARBRI students consistently score higher than students studying with any other bar prep option.

We have a lot more to say on this topic and why it matters. Learn more about the very real bar exam curve .  

5) Aren’t BARBRI lectures long and boring?

I’ll admit, it’s hard to make Fee Simple Subject to Condition Subsequent exciting, but I can tell you year after year students rave about the BARBRI faculty. We still have the most brilliant legal minds teaching you the concepts that you’ll most likely encounter on your bar exam. These U.S. law professors are all gifted teachers who have the fantastic ability to make learning the law engaging, memorable and understandable. 

Additionally, BARBRI Bar Review lectures offer an amazing interactive online experience. All lectures are segmented into subtopics, so you may choose to watch a lecture in its entirety or watch/re-watch specific segments. You’ll actively participate during your lecture by taking quizzes and completing other learning activities.

You can take notes directly in your lecture player with a built-in notepad. Each note you take is linked to that specific point in the lecture so you can jump back to that exact point at any time. You can also review video transcripts and enable or disable closed captioning.

Watch this video  to see how the BARBRI lecture experience will elevate your overall bar prep experience.

Here’s what a couple of students have said about their BARBRI Bar Review experience:

“I have an extremely hard time studying and have little discipline when it comes to book study. However, I love listening to lectures. My main mode of study with BARBRI Bar Review was listening and re-listening to the lectures, all day, anywhere. Your lecturers are absolutely amazing. AMAZING. Paula Franzese, Rich Freer, all the others — just no words, only immense admiration for and gratitude to them.

I learned more from them in hours than I learned in law school in years. Just incredible professors — brilliant experts not only in their fields but in the way the student, or rather the human, brain works. Their humor and tools to retain that huge amount of information worked WONDERS, and I love them all so much. I was unsure about spending that sort of money on BARBRI, but you were worth it all — you are the reason I passed the bar exam!!!”   

— Olesya Vernyi

“I sat for the Delaware Bar for the first time and am happy to say I passed. Thank you BARBRI! I was able to study from home, at my own pace, and I made it. BARBRI online lectures were very informative and motivational. The professors highlighted exactly what to focus on for the exam and I did just that. They not only taught the law, they were encouraging and made me feel like I was not alone. I walked into the exam feeling confident that I knew enough to make it. My thanks to Professor Paula Franzese with her songs, she made me love Property Law again… Finally, my favorite professor who helped me stick with it, Professor Chuck Shonholtz! The man is brilliant and just amazing. Thank you BARBRI for helping fulfill my dream of being an attorney in Delaware.”

— Patience I. Moyo

We’re here for you

If you have other questions, your BARBRI Director of Legal Education is here for you. You can also check out more BARBRI FAQs or learn about BARBRI Bar Review course options .

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