Studying may be hurting your chances on the bar exam.
If you are four weeks or less away from your bar exam date then you shouldn’t be studying.
Do this instead
Bar takers less than a month from their exam date should be collecting optimization data. Instead of another session of generally reviewing an entire topic outline or audio lecture, they should be consistently gathering information on
what is known,
what is unknown, and
what is unclear,
and working on those unknown and unclear areas.
Why stop studying for the bar exam?
When you’re spending your hours strictly reviewing or taking in the information you’re missing a crucial component to actually doing well on the bar exam, optimization data.
How do I get my best score on the bar exam in only four weeks?
When people work with me to pass the bar exam I advised them that within the four weeks prior to your bar exam date you should strictly be practicing. Practice your multiple-choice questions, practice your MPTs, and practice your state essays or MEEs.
From there you ONLY review what you’ve gotten incorrect. If you answered a question correctly, that means you already know it and you don’t need to spend precious time reviewing it. Surely you will run into it again on a subsequent practice session.
If you got a question incorrect, that’s when you pull up the section of your outline or audios that covers the topic and review that section only (you can also review your self-recorded audios, mind-maps, or self-written outlines—these study methods are covered in Bar Exam Ready.
Not only is this time-efficient, but it’ll save your bar exam. By only studying what you don’t know, you spend your time filling in your knowledge gaps, grabbing those few points you would’ve otherwise left on the table. (I’ve heard TOO many stories of people who missed the passing score by 3 points).
Now your wrong answers show you exactly what you need to study and most importantly what you don’t.
What if you’re afraid that by not studying what you already know you will forget it and do badly on the official exam?
There’s a science-backed method to studying your material that ensures you remember everything you studied. I teach this method inside Bar Exam Ready (more on that below).
Performance optimization takes thick skin. You may move onto your practice-only sessions and find that you didn’t really learn anything in the past 4 to 6 weeks of studying (using generic study schedules). This is usually because you were studying in a way that was inefficient for your brain (because of faithfully following generic study schedules).
It could also mean you weren’t studying at all.
Both are issues that live outside of the academic material and will only be discovered and rectified through doing something like the Study Personality and Learning Super Power Quizzes that I offer inside of Bar Exam Ready.
Take the Study Personality Quiz here.
Using those, you’ll find out what study practices actually work for your brain, so that every time you sit down to study, you are assured that the activity you’re doing is building up your knowledge and not just passing the time.
If you have been studying efficiently, your practice sessions will be a breeze. But if you’ve been following generic study schedules, blindly checking off the boxes, sticking with what “they” told you to do, even after it’s apparent that it’s not working, then your practice sessions are going to hurt. But better now than on your actual exam.
This method also gives you a sense of power, instead of defeat, when you get a question wrong. Often bar takers are hit hard when they see they don’t know every single answer. They get discouraged and may shy away from the very thing they need to pass the bar exam (doing practice questions to continue getting optimization data).
Now, instead of feeling defeat, you can become certain of what you do know and what you don’t know and dedicate the rest of your study days to brushing up on those topics where you aren’t doing so well. As you continue practice sessions and get correct what you used to get incorrect, you can be sure your overall scores have improved you have optimized your bar exam performance.
This is what you should be doing if you are four weeks or less away from your Bar Exam.
Want more?
This method is a small slice of what’s covered inside Bar Exam Ready. On top of highly effective methods, Bar Exam Ready has proprietary tools to assess your learning and academic needs (and puts you in a “study category”), a bank of study strategies (tailored to each “study category” so you’re only doing what WILL work for you), and my Plan Creation Formula that ensures your study plan facilitates you remembering all your material as easily as your phone number!
In Bar Exam Ready you’ll also get the knowledge and tools to make each study session efficient, meaning you spend every minute actually learning. This results in shorter yet more efficient study sessions (a lucky break for those working full time or who only have 4 weeks until their exam).
If you are taking the bar exam in a few weeks and you are still having trouble with a topic OR you are gearing up for next year’s bar exam, I highly recommend you check out Bar Exam Ready.
Learn more about Bar Exam Ready here.
