Sunday, July 8, 2007

MBEs from Hell

A friend told me that I should do the 200 question practice test in the back of the PMBR blue book right before the exam for practice. I think I won't.

I did the first 26 yesterday and missed half. 50%! That's a clear fail even by Honigsberg's standard. I much prefer my ~80% average on Adaptibar, or my ~75% average in BarBri.

Are the PMBR questions worth the pain? Should I do them anyway? Are they like steroids? Do I need to use them to bulk up? Or, like steroids, will they simply push me over the edge?

9 comments:

X said...

I don't know. Honestly, I haven't read much into the differences between the problems. It seems like they make problems "advanced" by giving you two page fact patterns.

I think PMBR might test more nuances that aren't in our Conviser Mini Outline. Most of the answers are in our big outline that I don't have the time nor energy to read. It sucks when you miss problems because you're never read a particular holding before.

The Grand Poobah said...

I agree. It seemed like the fact patterns were designed to serve as the basis for many questions. They had three or four paragraphs with many parties and lots of things going on with one question that's tangentially related to one of the interactions (or five questions.) And the question adds facts so you have to go back and re-read the fact pattern. If nothing else, that taught me to read the call first. I'm a fast reader but these really stressed me out.

Maybe I'll let my dog chew on that book for a while. Then I'll pick it back up when it knows its place.

"Bad book! Go get chewed on by the dog then come back when you're ready to say you're sorry." (;-)>

Unknown said...

I have heard from our bar review that the pmbr questions which are traditionally used in the 3 day workshop are designed to get you scared, and alot of them are not even on the topics listed by the NCBE.
Having said that, our class will be taking the pmbr mbe next week......grrrr.....

Good luck studying, all the best to you, I enjoy reading your blog!

The Grand Poobah said...

RGZ, Thanks for the kind words. I wish I could carry all of the good will that I've received through this blog into the exam with me. Actually, I will. I guess I just wish it was worth some points! (;-)>

The BarBri Simulated MBEs were advertised as having a higher degree of difficulty than the regular exam, and I did relatively well on those. The ones in the PMBR blue book just seemed strange. I'll probably get back to them later. Maybe.

Emily said...

I've been told by several repeaters who passed that the PMBR blue book is the best practice. My friend who passed the Feb said she went through the bluebook twice as prep. I'm just doing the bluebook and the advanced BarBri questions. Painful, true, but instilling confidence if I score above 65%.

The Grand Poobah said...

Okay. Fine. Then surgery with the dull knife (and no anesthetic) it is. It's a good thing I buy Excedrin by the case.

I know you're right. It's the same thing as your trainer making you do 10 more sit-ups when you feel like you can't do one more. No pain ... and all that rubbish.

Blah.

Seriously, though, thanks for telling me that. It's good to know.

The Grand Poobah said...

Not that I have a trainer, you understand. The closest I came to that was a drill sergeant.

some guy said...

I don't know. I think it's probably hard to go wrong with BarBri or PMBR (red or blue). I have heard so many different theories on which are better and which are closer to the real thing - I need to just be doing questions and not worrying about it...

The Grand Poobah said...

Good point. Which source one picked might have made some kind of difference early on, but for now, anything (and everything) is better than nothing.