As we enter into the July 2010 Bar Exam study season, tens of thousands of students will be gearing up for their respective bar exams at the end of July. There’s little doubt that the next couple months will be very stressful. At times you’ll feel overwhelmed due to the variety and sheer volume of what you need to study and practice. There are a lot of viewpoints out there about what subjects to study, for how long and in what order.
Here at MicroMash we adhere to a philosophy that empowers our students. We provide the TOOLS to succeed, but ultimately that success is up to you. You are in charge of your own fate as you prepare for the bar exam. No one else can prepare for you. You have to put in the time, the work, and the discipline. My advice is to build a study schedule you can live with by chunking down the work into manageable pieces. However, it is also important to build some down time into that schedule to re-charge your batteries. Anyone who dives in and doesn’t come up for air for a 6 to 8 week period is asking for trouble.
Will you study on the weekends?
Students often ask whether it makes sense to continue their studies on the weekends. Some prefer to use that time as free time and give themselves a break. Others use the time for a lighter study schedule, to review the items they studied during the past week, or to prepare for the week ahead. So we thought we’d ask you to share your planned study habits for this coming bar exam. Do you plan to study during the weekends, or use that as down time, or a mixture of both?
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Because our MBE study and practice programs are online, we here at MicroMash Bar Review have access to a lot of interesting data and analytics. We looked at that data from the recent February 2010 Bar Exam and thought we’d share the study habits of those that have come before. We looked at the number of people who logged in every day during the 8 weekly periods leading up to the bar exam in February (Sunday to Saturday). The first and most obvious way to look at the data was to aggregate all the days of the week to see if there were any trends present within people’s study habits. This is what we found…
Students who logged in to practice MBE questions at MicroMash, by day of the week
MicroMash MBE Study Trends for February 2010 Bar Exam
As you can see from the above graph, there is a pretty significant difference in terms of weekend MBE practice. It appears that fewer people are practicing MBE questions over the weekend. Now, it could be that students are taking that time to review other materials, or to create flashcards, prepare for the coming week, or any number of other activities that are bar study related, so we cannot infer that 25% fewer students are studying on weekends.
The other thing that jumps out at me right away is the trend within the work week. Mondays and Tuesdays start out very high with a drop off on Wednesdays and Thursdays. However, the thing that surprises me most is the number of log ins on Friday. I suspect what’s happening is that some students slack off mid-week, but as Friday approaches they realize they need to “get crackin” or end up starting the weekend behind where they want to be – hence the increased work being done on Fridays. What can you take from this? Ratchet up your study time on Wednesdays and Thursdays to be sure you’re doing what needs to be done every day. Formulate your plan and stick to it, modifying only when something urgent interrupts your study schedule.
Another interesting way to look at the data presented itself to us as we looked through the numbers. We looked at the MBE log in data for the 8 weeks leading up to the bar exam and compared week over week log ins to see how people allocated their study time over that period. Here’s what we found…
Students who logged in to practice MBE questions at MicroMash, week by week
MicroMash MBE Study Trends for February 2010 Bar Exam, Week Over Week
As you can see from this second graph, there is a fairly consistent increase in activity as the bar exam approaches, with the exception of a drop off the week prior to the bar exam. This makes sense to me because a significant number of students like the notion of winding down the stress level and study time as the exam approaches.
I don’t think we can draw any steadfast conclusions from this usage data because MBE practice questions really only reflect one aspect of bar study. Nevertheless, I found this data interesting and worth sharing, and I hope that you do too. Good luck to all of you who are sitting for a bar exam this July! Stop back frequently – we’ll begin serving our MBE questions of the day again here on Bar Exam Brief for the 8 weeks or so leading up to the exam. You can also review previous questions from last February by clicking on the “MBE QoD”in the tag cloud to the right, or by simply clicking here! As always, you can add to the discussion via the comments section below.
