Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The Multistate Bar Exam

This will be my one and only post on the bar exam, I promise. Next time, Dr. Pepper.

Anyway, one day of the bar exam is a 200-question multiple choice test called the Multistate Bar Exam ("MBE" for short). It's published by the people who do the ACT, who do not realize that the bar examiners who write the test are crazy.

On the back of the MBE booklets, they have a sample question to show you how to answer correctly-

What is the capital of the United States?
a) Los Angeles, CA
b) New York, NY
c) Washington, DC
d) Dallas, TX


This is clearly written by the ACT people. The correct answer is "c," which anyone who watches television knows. But, in fact, the real answers to the above question as written by the National Conference of Bar Examiners would be:

a) New York, NY, because it is the largest city on the East Coast
b) Baltimore, MD, because it has a large African-American population
c) Arlington, VA, because the Pentagon is located there
d) Lebanon, KS, because it is at the geographic center of the United States


Notice something about these answers? They are all stupendously wrong. However, Arlington, VA is probably the least wrong, so "c" would be the correct answer. Unless, of course, enough test takers answered "b," so then both answers would get credit.

All right, that's out of my system.

1 comment:

Matt said...

Dude, I just dealt with the horrific MBE today as well, and your post had me laughing out loud. I couldn't agree with you more. Here's another one: Which is the safest form of travel?

A) Driving, because the law requires drivers to be licensed.
B) Flying, because statistically, far fewer people die in airplane crashes than car crashes.
C) Walking, because chances of injury are significantly less than other modes of transportation when traveling at 3 miles per hour.
D) There are no safe forms of travel.

That's about what the MBE was like today.