a) Which materials should I use?
Based on my experience, I recommend the following.
(1) NCBE MEE Questions and Analyses
USD 15 for each download
I practiced the 2010–2017 exams (eight years) with about 120 questions.
You can download the previous exams (2009–2013 exams, as of today) at no cost here.
The most important thing for this material is its sample answers.
These are released by NCBE, which means you can understand what is critical and what is not during the actual exam.
This should be your primary source, and you can learn a lot by studying the material here.
b) How should I use them?
I practiced all of the 120 questions above.
(1) First time practice
About 10 minutes: Read a question and build my answer outline briefly
About 15 minutes: Read and understand the model answer
About 25 minutes: Make my answer on my own, based on the model answer and my outline book
(2) Second time practice
About 5 minutes: Read a question and build my answer outline briefly
About 20 minutes: Make my answer on my own without any references
By making my own answer after reading through the model explanation, I became able to make answers with the expected length and depth. I could avoid the drawback of focusing on trivial issues, for which the exam does not care.
The more answers you make, the more easily for you to write English essays. If you feel you are not good at English writing, as I did, I recommend writing as many essays as possible.
After studying the analyses, I learned that the evaluation for each fact pattern was not so crucial.
They can place a high emphasis on how you analyzed and evaluated the fact pattern.
However, if graders do this thoroughly, grading objectively could become difficult, because evaluation of fact could be infinite and there would be no correct answers.
One of my lessons from doing the MEEs was if you could spot issues correctly, write relevant rules precisely, and apply them to the fact pattern without any misunderstanding, then you could still get a passing grade (even though your analysis was not so through).
As for the rules, it would be a big advantage if you could write relevant rules without any stress during the exam.
For this, I always made the effort to memorize the rules.
I could not remember long sentences, owing to my poor language proficiencies.
All I could do was remember some keywords and try to connect them as logically as I could.
Although I tried some private grading services, I was not sure they were efficient for me.
For example, some graders put too much emphasis on the IRAC formalities.
However, if you analyze sample answers released by NCBE, you could find these are not necessarily essential in some cases.
As such, analyzing model answers would be meaningful for anyone who has concerns about the exam.
c) I am still not sure about the differences between good and bad answers. What should I do?
As stated above, the most effective way to grasp is to study the sample answers released by NCBE.
The following can also be a good guide.
The book collects actual exam answers by applicants and comments on each answer. Usually, answers with high and low scores are included.
Next Page
