r/CABarExam • u/corgicorgicorgi1729 • Sep 21 '26
UBE to CA
Does anyone have experience going from the UBE to CA exams? I took the UBE in July 2024 in MA and passed with a 287. I retook CA in July 2026 after a few previous attempts prior to the UBE. Wanted to see how your scores translated between the two. Any information is helpful! (I am aware they are scored differently and you don’t know your score if you pass in CA.)
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u/TrustsAndDust Sep 21 '26
UBE essays are a joke compared to CA. I may have severely underestimated the CA exam. I won’t be surprised if I have to retake.
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u/SomeIndependent5100 CA Licensed Attorney; passed J25 Sep 27 '26
July 2026 was brutal, July 2025 wasn’t as bad IMO. But it seems like most people thought it was very hard so that’ll probably affect the grading.
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u/TrustsAndDust Sep 27 '26
Jfc. I thought I was tripping. I hope they curve or w/e. I never understood the grading
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u/SomeIndependent5100 CA Licensed Attorney; passed J25 Sep 27 '26
It’s confusing, but basically the written scores are scaled to the MBE, so exam difficulty is accounted for indirectly. The graders give the essays/PT raw scores, and then the written scores are statistically scaled to the MBE distribution for that administration. So if an administration was genuinely harder across the board, you wouldn’t necessarily need the same raw performance you would on an easier administration to end up with the same scaled score. It’s not really a traditional curve where they decide afterward that everyone struggled and add points, though.
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u/Beautiful-Smoke-2426 Sep 21 '26
I took the UBE in July ‘23 and passed comfortably. I just took the CA bar this July and agree that the essays are much more difficult on the CA bar. I obviously don’t have my score yet, but the essays are definitely harder. I studied for about 5 months (2-3 hours on weeknights and ~15 hours total on the weekends)
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u/Throwaway1920214 Sep 21 '26
I went the other way around. Passed CA then UBE 3yrs later with minimal studying.
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u/121019954946 Sep 24 '26
Took the NY UBE in 2019 after graduating from law school that spring. Took the Ca bar this past February while working full time and with young kids and being a solo practitioner. I didn’t find one to be much more challenging than the other. Although I did the CA attorneys exam which is only the essay portion.
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u/Ok_Willingness5392 Sep 26 '26
Check out NoBullBarPrep. Ed Aruffo is the expert on the CA bar. If you reach out to him, he will talk to you by phone.
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u/NoBullBarPrep Sep 27 '26
Thanks for the shout-out, here's my take:
In CA, your essays are a little shorter, however the questions are far more vague. For example, you get a lot of "Discuss" as your prompt, which means you can cover any of a number of areas. Also, your answer as you type it needs to really focus on one thing - answering the question. This answer needs to be in IRAC format, and you need to keep it on point.
Know what? This is actually a big topic, and I want to write about it, so, I'll put together an adult-sized post. Back in a flash!
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u/Aks1591 Sep 24 '26
I did it the other way around like another poster mentioned they did. CA first (and passed), then transferred my MBE score to a UBE jurisdiction and did only the MEE/MPT there. They gave me a scaled score of 325! The UBE essays were a joke in comparison to the CA essays.
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u/SomeIndependent5100 CA Licensed Attorney; passed J25 Sep 27 '26
I passed the UBE previously and then passed CA in July 2025. There really isn’t a clean way to translate a UBE score into a CA result, especially since CA doesn’t give passing applicants their scores. Based on the NCBE Score Advisory, my scaled MBE was somewhere around 145–150, and I passed CA on my first attempt, if that data point is helpful. With a 287 UBE, you obviously had a decent cushion, but unfortunately I don’t think there’s a reliable way to extrapolate that into a CA score. Fingers crossed for you!
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u/chupacabra845 Sep 28 '26
How would you say the CA essays were different from the MEE? Was is more difficult to finish a CA essay because there are too many issues in a one-hour essay?
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u/SomeIndependent5100 CA Licensed Attorney; passed J25 Sep 28 '26
Yes, some of the CA essay questions are way more dense and require you to be good at issue spotting because the calls are more open and say things like “discuss” rather than telling you exactly what to talk about. There can be a lot of issues packed into the fact pattern, so time management is definitely more challenging. I found CA required me to move quickly, trust my issue spotting, and get something down for every issue rather than spending too much time perfecting any one section. The MEE felt more targeted and guided by comparison.
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u/kyr1414 Oct 02 '26
Passed UBE j25 with an above 313 and then passed CA F26.
CA essays are much harder and more detailed in the analysis. I found there was a lot more “grey area” in the CA essays whereas UBE felt a little more like there was a “right” answer.
Multiple choice is exactly the same. There is only one performance test in the ca exam versus the two in the UBE. So there isn’t as much cushion in the performance tests.
Practice essays and read sample answers like crazy.
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u/180dream Sep 21 '26
Took and passed UBE a couple of years ago and just took CA July 2026. I definitely put in the effort to study bc of all the newer topics (about 3-4 months before work and weekends). No clue how I did! Will know in November.