PMBR 3-day test evaluation

Despite my overwhelming sense of urgency regarding the upcoming bar exam, I decided that since I had already paid for the PMBR 3-day, I may as well go ahead and take it. Needless to say, my thoughts are rather unimpressive. My initial sentiments regarding this course as being completely unnecessary if you have any sort of discipline remain.

The test isn't bad - unlike the real thing, you pretty much are crammed into a small auditorium with people flanking you from all sides. People can up and leave whenever and the annoying "buzz" of "silent" cell phones is readily apparent and just as distracting as it normally is. At least for the real thing (supposedly), they ban people from leaving with so much time left.

The test itself consists of 100 questions in the morning session and 100 more at night. I'm not sure how much it truly simulates the real thing, other than the time constraints, because maybe five fact patterns actually consisted of multiple questions, but the most questions there ever was of a single fact pattern was 2. I would think that PMBR's red or blue book questions that have more than three or four questions in one fact pattern would be a little more realistic. After all, I fully expect there to be fact patterns with questions from multiple subjects. So I am left to wonder why PMBR wouldn't emphasize this on their test.

Some, if not more than a handful of questions are from the PMBR six-day (which are largely duplicated in the PMBR red and blue workbooks). I haven't graded it yet, but hopefully things I got wrong the first time I didn't get wrong this time. They say if you get 120 right, you are in the 90th percentile. They also say the average score is a 94 or 95. I guess that's good, but again, it says very little if this test isn't representative of the real thing. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

I may sit through the morning lecture tomorrow since I've already paid for it, then bag the rest of it to do more productive studying on my own. Having already found Barbri's 3-day lecture largely worthless, I can't imagine this one is any better (although I guess hearing things is never that bad).

From people who have already taken it, it supposedly is better than Barbri's (or worse, depending on who you talk to), and in either case, I highly doubt they will tell me anything that they haven't already told me during the six-day course. I think my time at this point is better spent reviewing for the essay topics. As much as I would love to contest some of their questions in the red book to their direct agents, my time has become ultra valuable at this point.

There are a couple of questions that are so ridiculous they are funny. For example, one of them dealt with some sort of privacy or defamation claim and among the choices of evil to pick from, you could have picked between a two-headed baby and a mother breast feeding her kid. I can't remember what I picked, but I remember thinking what the heck is this? Hopefully that isn't the case in a couple weeks.

So, my take on PMBR's 3-day course? Again, if you have any sort of discipline, you could do 200 multiple choice on your own and grade them yourself. Of course, if, like me, you were suckered into this course by means of the "PMBR scare tactics," it certainly doesn't hurt. As I've suggested before, it's good for some people and less good for others - if you are confident in your studying habits, you probably are better off either just using Barbri's multiple choice problems or buying the PMBR books off of ebay (or simply from them).

As compared to the Barbri MBE, I find it comparable. Again, if you have the discipline, I think both Barbri and PMBR is overkill. But, it certainly doesn't hurt having 2 (or 3) MBE's under your belt before the real thing either. Barbri has a second full length MBE in the Drills book; PMBR's is in the blue book. Go crazy.

If I have anything to add about the lectures (if I do wind up psyching myself into going tomorrow morning), I will write about it briefly tomorrow.

Tags: pmbr, pmbr 3-day evaulation, pmbr 3-day course, pmbr 3-day