NCBE Announces National Mean for July 2025 MBE
MADISON, WISCONSIN, August 28, 2025—The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) announced today that the national mean scaled score for the July 2025 Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) was 142.4, an increase of about 0.6 points compared to the July 2024 mean of 141.8, and the highest July MBE mean since 2013 excluding the summer and fall 2020 administrations.[1]
The MBE, one of three sections that make up the bar exam in most US jurisdictions, consists of 200 multiple-choice questions answered over six hours.
46,959 examinees took the July 2025 MBE, a decrease of about 6% compared to the 49,844 examinees who sat for the exam in July 2024.
Approximately 77% of July 2025 examinees were likely taking the exam for the first time, and approximately 23% were likely repeat test takers.[2]This reflects a slight increase in the proportion of likely first-time takers and a slight decrease in the proportion of likely repeaters compared to July 2024, when approximately 76% of examinees were likely taking the exam for the first time, and approximately 24% were likely repeat test takers.
“These results continue the upward trend we’ve seen on July exams starting in 2022,” said Bob Schwartz, NCBE’s Managing Director of Psychometrics. “The majority of July examinees are taking the bar exam for the first time, and performance by those first-time test takers this year drove the overall increase in the national mean.” Schwartz added: “Although a number of different factors contribute to passing rate trends, and pass rates will vary from one jurisdiction to another, due to this increase in mean we expect to see a small increase in overall pass rates compared to last July.”
The MBE is equated as part of the scoring process to adjust for any variation in exam difficulty across administrations. This statistical procedure ensures that examinee performance can be meaningfully compared over time, with scores retaining the same interpretation regardless of the specific administration.
Jurisdictions will soon begin reporting their July 2025 results; bar examination pass rates as reported by jurisdictions are available on the NCBE website. Many jurisdictions are still in the process of grading the written components of the bar exam; once this process is completed, bar exam scores will be calculated and passing decisions reported by those jurisdictions.
[1]Due to low examinee counts for the July, September, and October 2020 in-person MBE administrations, comparability of results from those administrations to other years’ results may be limited.
[2] The first-time and repeat MBE-based test taker information calculated by NCBE is an approximation based on the NCBE Number and biographic data, which has not been used consistently in all jurisdictions across time. July 2025 examinees who sat for the California bar exam in February 2025 (which did not include the MBE) and who had not previously taken a bar exam will appear as first-time test takers in NCBE’s July 2025 data. Prior to 2022, approximately 10% of examinees could not be tracked with certainty by NCBE as either first-time or repeat takers due to a lack of sufficient biographic information.
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About the National Conference of Bar Examiners
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, is a not-for-profit corporation founded in 1931. NCBE promotes fairness, integrity, and best practices in bar admissions for the benefit and protection of the public, in pursuit of its vision of a competent, ethical, and diverse legal profession. Best known for developing bar exam content used by 54 US jurisdictions, NCBE serves admission authorities, courts, the legal education community, and candidates by providing high-quality assessment products, services, and research; character investigations; and informational and educational resources and programs. In 2026, NCBE will launch the next generation of the bar examination, ensuring that the exam continues to test the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for competent entry-level legal practice in a changing profession. For more information, visit the NCBE website at https://www.ncbex.org.
About the Multistate Bar Examination
The Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) is a six-hour, 200-question multiple-choice examination developed by NCBE and administered by user jurisdictions as part of the bar examination, typically given twice each year. The purpose of the MBE is to assess the extent to which an examinee can apply fundamental legal principles and legal reasoning to analyze given fact patterns. The subjects tested on the MBE are Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property, and Torts. In addition to assessing examinee knowledge and skills, the MBE is used to equate the bar exam. Equating is a statistical procedure used for most large-scale standardized tests to ensure that exam scores retain the same meaning across administrations and over time. More information about the MBE is available on the NCBE website at https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mbe/.
About the Uniform Bar Examination
The UBE is a two-day bar examination composed of the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), two Multistate Performance Test (MPT) tasks, and the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE). It is uniformly administered, graded, and scored and results in a portable score that can be transferred to other UBE jurisdictions. More information about the UBE is available on the NCBE website at https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/. 41 US jurisdictions currently participate in the UBE, and more than 48,000 examinees took the UBE in 2024.