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June 26th, 2008

the ridiculousness

So I’m in the middle of making more flashcards, and I am still liking this form of studying. What I am not liking is this thing called the Multistate Performance Test which appears to have taken up about six hours more of my Bar/Bri time (or would have, had I gone) than necessary.

Folks, it’s a CLOSED UNIVERSE EXERCISE. You read the file and the library, follow the instructions in the “task memo,” and write something down. You only get those 8 handwritten pages in which to do it (or 4600 words characters on the laptop), and you get 90 minutes—that’s an hour and a half. This, folks, is not hard stuff. Sure, practice is important, so Bar/Bri has thoughtfully given us a whole book of prior MPTs with which to practice this exercise. But it’s not something you can exactly TEACH or even learn. You just have to do it. Yet Bar/Bri spends 7 classroom hours on it.

That’s not to say that I would want OTHER Bar/Bri stuff to fill that space; but slicing a day or two off of Bar/Bri there at the end, when the remaining days are limited, would have been awesome.

Back to flashcards.

posted by k at 4:13 pm | The Bar |

comments

seriously? I think we got an hour about it last Friday. And no one mentioned anything about a word limit… wonder if that’s another state-by-state difference, or maybe I’m just woefully uninformed?

posted by ^k^, June 26th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

I said word, but what I meant was character. And that’s just the limit the exam software sets on the essays; it’s apparently the same for the MPT. That may be state-by-state, but I think it’s just supposed to approximate how many characters you could write down on the wide-spaced answer sheets.

posted by k, June 26th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

Oh, and yeah–I think about an hour is about all it needs. (Notably, I am not at Bar/Bri today.)

posted by k, June 26th, 2008 at 4:29 pm

We had 6 hours of MPT lecture, as well as 90 minutes of timed practice MPT, and then a video going over the answer. I skipped all but the first 2 hours - they were miserable enough.

posted by jeanne, June 26th, 2008 at 5:04 pm

I just listened to our (Texas) MPT lecture. 2:45, which was approximately 2 hours longer than necessary. (well probably 2:30 longer than necessary but I suppose there could be something in the additional 30 minutes that could be helpful)

Lectures like that are not helping my motivation. Back to my tax lecture… sigh.

posted by LL, June 26th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

I went to the first lecture (2 hrs.) but when it became painfully obvious that as long as you are capable of following directions, you’ll do fine on the MPT, I decided not to waste anymore time on it.

Seriously, the biggest point they made was “follow the directions exactly”. Um, yeah. I can do that without wasting 6 hours in lecture and even more practicing for a *closed universe* exercise. What an utter waste of time.

(Now, watch me get zero on it… ;)

posted by Dave!, June 26th, 2008 at 9:36 pm

The really entertaining part is that when I went to do a couple of practice MPTs and looked at the MPT book, Duffy’s entire lecture and then some (actually, useful stuff) is IN THE FREAKING BOOK! It would have been a much better use of my time to have read that during the lecture instead of listen to him ramble on about how to write a first year memo. Sigh.

posted by Joey, June 26th, 2008 at 11:13 pm