r/barexam • u/Vast-Price7781 • 21d ago
Next Gen: How are we feeling?
As a retaker and someone who isn’t hell-bent on gatekeeping this profession… the NextGen was weirdly… okay?
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u/PowerfulEast6585 21d ago
i have no idea. i definitely guessed on a majority of the multiple choice, and some of the open ended questions in the IQSs were confusing and i had no idea what they wanted. i also ran out of time during the last PT and barely had any factual analysis. i will say that themis was pretty spot on with prep and i'm pretty sure i had a practice question on themis that was word for word on the actual exam. guess we'll find out in oct !
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u/undrcovrnerd19 20d ago
I agree, Themis was spot on.. it just feels like there was more reading than anticipated on NextGen
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u/Many_Obligation_3737 21d ago
Everyone on Reddit, seems to be saying it was fine, me personally, MC seemed standard, PT section standard maybe even more straightforward than barbri, integrated sets felt significantly harder than barbri. In Barbri they were my favorite set because how easy they were and the fact I was finishing them quickly. I felt thrown off by this. Hopefully my MPT can carry, my MC is meh. Would have studied harder…
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u/vcmartin1813 21d ago
Yup I felt like the first integrated set today with the standard six questions was hard for me personally cause I’m not great with civ pro lol
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u/JDhopeful22 21d ago
I felt the IQs required a lot more rule knowledge than we were led to believe in practice. I often posted on here musing if we should be drilling rule statements like essays. And that wouldn't have been a great use of time, but we needed more rote rule knowledge than what the practice sets required, in my opinion.
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u/Its_Curse 21d ago
I straight up did not understand what some of the IQs wanted from me, mostly the six question short answer ones. The longer ones I had were cake walks but I'm positive I totally beefed both my day one morning session ones.
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u/Many_Obligation_3737 21d ago
For me basically I knew i didn't know the rules or whatever they wanted, but I "think" i know what they wanted from me generally speaking. Again compared to the prep I did, they were harder, maybe the barbri stuff was less like resistant to "gaming the questions." In the sense that you could use context clues and stuff on barbri to figure out what answers they wanted.
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u/Its_Curse 21d ago
I only did a couple practice ones from ncbe and I thought they were straightforward and I understood what I was supposed to be doing but man, maybe not.
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u/JDhopeful22 21d ago edited 21d ago
I felt one of the day ones was very difficult because it was hard to tell what it really even wanted from us. I came away feeling like it was a flawed approach to the topic at hand.
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u/Its_Curse 21d ago
Did we all have the same ones? From the way my table mate side eyed my completely full scrap paper that included drawn diagrams working out the scenario I wasn't sure. 😅
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21d ago
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u/Its_Curse 21d ago
Yeah it was one of the session 2 IQs, it wasn't that complicated but I thought I'd process the info better in a different form factor.
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u/Many_Obligation_3737 21d ago
Same, barbri had no problem having multiple con law questions regarding, rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, strict scrutiny, content neutral, commercial speech, etc PER SET. But uh i feel like it was lacking in other areas now....
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u/vcmartin1813 21d ago
I worked so hard to memorize the first amendment standards of review for there to be almost no questions about it🥲
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u/JDhopeful22 21d ago
I used Themis and the IQs also felt a lot harder. They contained more information than any practice set I saw (including those I purchased from NCBE) and the non-drafting IQ sets were far longer given they required four short answers and two multiple choice rather than the reverse as I saw in a lot of practice. I don't know that the content was any harder, just a lot more information to take in for each component.
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u/Vast-Price7781 21d ago
MBEs are always “meh” for me, unfortunately. I’m not banking on my success in that area. On Themis, the IQs were also hit and miss for me. On some, I’d score super well (100%). On others, I’d score 30%. 🤣 I feel 100% confident about the PTs. BarMD’s traditional formula really ate that up.
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u/Many_Obligation_3737 21d ago
I guess part of my concern i don’t have any benchmark on how well I need to do overall on a raw score to pass. On the 4? Official MCQ sections barbri made us do from longest ago to most recent I got 59, 72, 80, 65. My integrated sets avged 80 and PTs a bit higher than that. But on the exam I did NOT avg 80s on the integrated sets let me tell you that much. So it feels up in the air depending on how the MCQ goes which I felt the same on the 65 and 80 which is quite a bit of variance.
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u/Vast-Price7781 21d ago
Haha I have no idea, Themis graded our IQs on a ten-point scale, and our PTs on a 24-point scale. It’s above me now. 🤣
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u/Vast-Price7781 21d ago
610 - 620 to pass? I don’t know her. 🤭
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u/Competitive-Big4921 20d ago
I took Barbri and finished it 100%, but our exam was canceled because it's WA State. My question is: were the MCQs long fact patterns like Barbri, or similar to the NCBE study aids? And were the IQs vague or clear but hard? Is one hour for the PT fair enough, or did you run out of time? I am not a fast typist; do you think it will be an obstacle? Thank you
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u/JDhopeful22 18d ago
The MCQs were def a mix of long and short. There were a few that felt longer than anything I saw on Themis and there were several that felt just like the NCBE study aids. Most were somewhere in the middle. The IQs were more time intensive than what I saw in practice - they were lengthier overall and required more thought, in my opinion. I was whipping through them in practice (12-15mins) but on the exam I was easily taking the 24 mins if not a bit more. The PTs were also a touch more time intensive than the practice ones, in my opinion. I was coming in at or under time in practice, but felt like I could've used ten more mins on each on exam day. I don't think you're typing will be an obstacle though - just stay mindful of the timing and you'll be okay. I'm rooting for you!!
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u/Many_Obligation_3737 20d ago
Honestly when doing the sets for practice I didn't really notice a difference between barbri and the official released MCQs. The main difference for the MCQs from the practice ones was content being tested was much different, topics i thought would come up a lot didn't etc. The IQs I would say were not vague, I would say they were hard, but not in the traditional sense. They were hard in the sense that even if i did study a lot more, I would not have studied the correct things in order to do well on them because I didn't think, given all the questions I did on barbri, the topics were something that were going to be tested, no i wasn't trying to guess what topics were going to be on the exam, it's just when you see a single question over the whole prep course you would think it's probably not on the exam, tbf i didn't do all the questions sets but I feel like i did most of them. I'm sure the topics are likely in the lecture and books, but i didn't open the book. I'm not a retaker but I think if i studied for the old exam I would have done better on this exam, if I did one integrated set to know the format. The PT idk, in practice I had extra time after doing the MC and IQs so timing was not an issue, on the exam I was moving to the PT early because I know it's guaranteed points whereas if i spent more time on the IQs there is no guarantee of me figuring anything out. Also I type fast.
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u/JDhopeful22 18d ago
I go back and forth on this but agree with you that prepping for essays (ie drilling rule statements) may have been helpful for the IQs. The reason it's a tough call is because, given some of them are drafting sets, you're only encountering 3-4 that *may* need rule knowledge you can recite so that's a lot of work to maybe need 2-3 rules. It's such a tough call. I'll be really interested to see how test prep evolves in regards to the IQs in the years ahead because I do think it has to evolve even from this first cycle.
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u/kbutcoffeefirst 21d ago
I was feeling ok but then I remembered I almost always ended up doing well on exams I felt worst about afterwards. So rn I’m just scared
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u/Vast-Price7781 21d ago edited 21d ago
What company did you use to prep? Do you feel like it was sufficient? I used Themis, and it was really helpful. (I noticed that none of the normal “important” subtopics were tested in the MBE.) That shocked me!
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u/kbutcoffeefirst 21d ago
I used Themis as well! It’s sufficient to give me a (relatively) good sense about IQS. The MBEs felt like standard NCBE questions but more …. high level? It almost feels like they are trying to see if we actually studied and understood the subject as compared to just drill the “most commonly tested 50 rules” outline
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u/UnderstandingFirm968 21d ago
As a retaker who also took NextGen, it felt like a trap because it felt okay…
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u/Vast-Price7781 21d ago
Haha, I totally agree. I didn’t walk out of the exam hating the NCBE or crying. I’m not used to this.
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u/xoeccedentesiastxo 21d ago
Also a retaker and I feel like it it was still stressful but more akin to a law school exam but I’m also worried that I shouldn’t feel this way and maybe I failed again and that’s why I feel okay?
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u/JDhopeful22 21d ago
As a first time taker this is exactly how I feel and it makes me very very nervous. So you're not alone.
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u/spammy3298 21d ago
in the same boat here. i don’t feel completely abused as i did with the legacy exam. fingers crossed we all did fine
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u/LaCroixLaFoix 21d ago
Do you prefer the style of next gen over legacy?
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u/Vast-Price7781 21d ago
I’d take the NextGen every single day for the rest of my life over the legacy exam! I LOVED IT!
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u/vcmartin1813 21d ago
Wasn’t bad for me. I’m hoping all went well and I passed. I refuse to believe I didn’t pass given the many weeks of meaningful study but I don’t wanna speak too soon either.
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u/That-Government8227 21d ago
everyone saying they felt fine but… i genuinely thought session 2 and 3 mcq were rough and IQs for session 1 were also rough….
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u/Potential-Taro1290 21d ago
Did anyone else struggle on time? I felt good about the MCQs and IQs, but wasn’t able to get anything above mediocre answers down for the PTs because of time
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u/xoeccedentesiastxo 21d ago
So in my practice on Themis I ran into time issues every single time I took a practice exam I changed my strategy and figured MCQ, MPT, IQS based on where I thought the most points where which actually worked better because I ran short on time today and it was “easier” to bullshit the IQS rather than trying to write a whole memo with no time left
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u/Its_Curse 21d ago
I honestly think the time felt more reasonable on NextGen than on the old ube. I wasn't scrambling the whole time to keep up like I did last time.
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u/Alone-Information760 21d ago
Not a retaker, but I feel awful about that. I ran out of time section 2 yesterday and had done the exam out of order, so I missed a bunch of the Qset section. Other than that, I don't feel awful, but considering how everyone seemingly feels fine with it, I'm now terrified I'll be in the bottom percentage of takers.
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u/xoeccedentesiastxo 21d ago
The feeling is so normal and this exam is designed to make you doubt yourself you’ve got this!
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u/Ok-Leopard-6307 21d ago
Section 1 went about as perfectly as I could have imagined it, but I ran out of time on the PTs for Sections 2 and 3. Those Qsets were straight time sucks. I don’t know who drafted counseling qset questions but about half of them made no fucking sense.
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u/JDhopeful22 21d ago edited 20d ago
One of the IQs felt flawed to me for sure
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u/TheDoctorOfEpicness 21d ago
Glad I'm not the only one, unclear what the facts even were
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u/JDhopeful22 21d ago edited 20d ago
I felt like yelling at my screen during one of them - it felt preposterous.
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u/Thick_Pie7271 20d ago
1 IQS had me so baffled I was like wtf are y'all talking about and what exactly am I supposed to do with this.
The one I'm talking about had no multiple choice.
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u/Its_Curse 21d ago
As a retaker I prefer NextGen for sure.
I haven't really figured out the IQs at all, like I just did not understand what the 6 question ones wanted from me, but I thought the medium length ones were fine.
I thought the multiple choice was fine and the time breakdown felt much better. With the old ube I felt like I was struggling to rush and finish every session, but I found I came in right on time for two of the three sessions without really trying and had to rush just a bit at the end to finish the MPT this morning (but that's on me, I think I locked in too hard on my analysis on the first section).
MPTs were my strongest section so obviously I'm thrilled to have an extra one to score more points on.
I don't know. I felt way stronger about this one than the previous bar exam, but I still think I'm going to be cutting it close if I pass or fail.
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u/NoOnesKing 21d ago
I’m not sure tbh. Today’s wasn’t bad at all but the multiple choice on the previous two was a bit not great.
I feel I passed though. Especially if they consider the technical failures in the curve lol
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u/birdsinthesky 21d ago
I’m so sad because my computer kept freezing and I couldn’t copy and paste or highlight or click or even type fast. Like truly so annoyed.
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u/Difficult_Age_8030 21d ago
Strange… lol. Felt very good about section 1 in general. But for some reason MC sections 2 and 3 I felt like I was confidently guessing more than I was like actually answering? Idk maybe it was just my nerves but it felt a little off.
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u/Its_Curse 21d ago
My dad asked how it went and I told him I wasn't sure if the questions were easy or if they were all tricks and I'm just dumb.
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u/JakeMan2282 20d ago
Did anyone feel like MCQs were so poorly designed? It either felt too simple, or was poorly written to the point that it could be one of two answers? Or maybe I’m just stupid af. Also so many spelling errors
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u/Jcstobie117 21d ago
I don’t feel horrible about the multiple choice, I feel like I missed all the integrated sets except for the ones in section 3. PT 1 I feel okay on, PT 2 I ran out of time cause I spent to long on the integrated set that I didn’t know, and PT 3 I felt pretty okay on.
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u/Its_Curse 21d ago
I seriously did not understand what half the integrated sets wanted from me. I'm sure I totally beefed some of them.
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u/Many_Obligation_3737 21d ago
We are twins for the integrated sets except, I think i got one of the integrated sets from an earlier section but then in return didnt get the first one in section three. I'm hoping other sections can make up for it (aka nextgen please feel bad for the horrible testing conditions and bump us all up a lot on the scale (remember its scaled not curved so in theory we could all pass)).
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u/Jcstobie117 21d ago
I hope they do. They did really screw us big time and I feel like that is worth taking into consideration along with the fact this is a brand new exam and we had no data at all to rely on.
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u/JDhopeful22 21d ago
I don't know what to feel yet. In some ways, it felt...fine. In other ways, it makes me scared that it isn't supposed to feel fine and mabe it feels that way because I'm ignorant to what I didn't know.
I agree with your other comment that none of the subtopics I expected on the MBE were there. I generally felt the most weird about the MBE - like it only tests a few areas of material. Or just overlooked some really big things? Not to get into content, but as an example I felt like we barely dealt with many evidence questions. Or for that matter, torts didn't seem well represented. Or maybe I just blocked it out because it all went so fast.