MBE Scores For February Bar Exam Reach Historic, All-Time Low
A shockingly poor performance from test takers.
Just when we thought that bar exam performance couldn’t get any worse, lo and behold, the national mean MBE scaled score from the February 2017 has reared its ugly head. Last year, the national mean MBE scaled score from the February bar exam was 135, a 33-year low. This year, that same score is 134, which is the lowest in the history of aggregated MBE results. Exam statistics were first aggregated in 1976. The previous record low for this score was a 134.3, in 1980.
Professor Derek Muller of Pepperdine University School of Law has created a chart over at Excess of Democracy so that the MBE’s death drop can be better visualized:
(Photo via Prof. Derek Muller / Excess of Democracy)
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While it’s true that the February 2017 exam had a slightly different format — there were 25 experimental questions, rather than the standard 10, meaning that 175 questions were scaled into test takers’ scores instead of 190 — the difference in scores was expected to be negligible. Professor Muller has more information on the decline in MBE scores:
In February 2011, just 39.6% of all test-takers had a score of 135.4 or lower. 13.7% had a score in the range of 135.5 to 140.4, and 46.6% had a score of 140.5 or higher. … In February 2016, however, 51.1% of all test-takers had a score of 135.4 or lower, a 11.5-point jump. 13.7% had a score in the range of 135.5 to 140.4, and just 35.1% had a score of 140.5 or higher.
This is the result of law schools continuing to accept students with poor entering qualifications. Things will only get worse until this cycle ends. Law school graduates unable to pass the bar exam to become lawyers will be stuck with upwards of six figures of loan debt, so that law schools are able to rejoice that they’ve been able to keep the lights on for one more year. If law school administrators are trying to run the legal profession into the ground, then this is a surefire way to do so.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen with this summer’s exam, but based on the results from February, it might not be very good. We hope we’re wrong.
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UPDATE (4/11/2017, 1:40 p.m.): It’s not just MBE scores that are plummeting. See, e.g., Most Law Schools Did Horrendously On This State’s Bar Exam.
February 2017 MBE bar scores collapse to all-time record low in test history
[Excess of Democracy]
The best ways to visualize the impact of the decline in bar passage scores
[Excess of Democracy]
Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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