Many of you may have recently taken the Bar Exam.
Once the exam was over, you probably walked out of the exam room and took a deep breath. But instead of relief, you were hit by a wave of dread.
Perhaps you remembered an essay issue you completely missed, or recalled how you changed your answer on three different MBE questions at the last second.
If this is where your head is at right now, take a deep breath. Feeling like you failed the bar exam is a nearly universal experience. Many successful candidates walk out feeling defeated.
I’ve guided thousands of students through this difficult waiting period, and I can tell you that your post-exam anxiety is not an accurate predictor of your final score. Here are four logical reasons why you feel like you failed—and why you might have actually passed.
1. The “Negativity Bias” is Hijacking Your Memory
Evolution wired the human brain to remember threats and forget things that feel safe. Psychologists call this the negativity bias.
When you reflect on a 200-question multiple-choice test, your brain will completely ignore the 130 questions you answered confidently. Instead, it will fixate on the 10 questions that confused you, the rules you couldn’t remember, and the essay prompt that completely threw you off. You feel like you failed because your brain is selectively editing your memory to only show you your mistakes.
2. You Forgot About the Experimental Questions
The examiners are constantly testing out new material. These are unscored, beta-test questions used to gauge difficulty for future exams.
When you encountered a fact pattern that seemed bizarre, or tested a nuance of the law you had never seen in your commercial outline, there is a very good chance it was an unscored question. You may be losing sleep over questions that do not count toward your final score.
3. You Are Forgetting the Math (Scaling)
The Bar Exam is not a law school final, and it is not graded on a standard high school scale. You do not need an A or a B grade to pass. The bar exam tests for minimum competency.
Furthermore, the test is scaled. If an exam session proves to be more difficult than previous years, the raw scores are scaled up to account for it. You can get a significant number of multiple-choice questions wrong, and write mediocre, middle-of-the-road essays, and still pass.
4. Severe Cognitive Fatigue Distorts Your Perception
The Bar Exam is a grueling marathon of cognitive endurance. By the afternoon of day two, your prefrontal cortex is depleted. You may experience severe decision fatigue, making every question feel impossibly difficult and making you feel intellectually incompetent.
You weren’t incompetent; you were just exhausted. The struggle you felt in the final hours was a biological reality, not a reflection of your legal knowledge or how well you performed on the first 75% of the exam.
What to Do Now
Your job is complete, for now. Ruminating over the elements of a tort you might have missed will not change your score, but it will ruin your summer.
Put your notes in a drawer, and give your mind permission to rest. You survived the beast. Celebrate completing your marathon, and go do something that gives you joy. When November comes, whether you passed this time, or need to try again, your brain and body will be better prepared for whatever comes next if you’ve given yourself a bit of a break.