For the past 15 years, I have been making bar exam score calculators. I unified all my UBE calculators into one, providing calculators for states such as Alabama, Connecticut, Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington based on certain administrations of the exam.
The calculators are reliable (e.g. if you failed J21 and plug in your J21 scores it will calculate your exact total score). Examinees who are sitting for a future February exam should play around with past February calculators for your state to predict your performance based on a past February scale. Examinees taking an upcoming July exam should use a past July calculator for that state to test various scoring scenarios. I plan to make calculators for other states once I receive enough scores from examinees. There is also a non-UBE calculator for California examinees.
California Bar Exam Calculator
The above calculators only convert the essay scale. I also have an MBE calculator that will estimate your scaled MBE score. FYI, since the last MBE scale to be publicly released was in 2013, every scale after that is an estimate based on my looking at all the permutations of MBE subscores that I receive from examinees for that exam – I regard them as reliable, but they may not be exact:
I find that MBE scores often correlate well with MBE practice scores, so this calculator will give you a realistic idea of how your % correct in MBE practice will translate into a particular scaled MBE score. For example, if you answered 1,000+ representative MBE questions in practice and averaged 65% overall, you will probably average somewhere around 65% correct on the actual MBE (meaning a scaled score around 140).
Finally, I have a calculator that uses past NYBOLE and NCBE studies to estimate your MBE and UBE score. If you are from a non-UBE state, I convert the passing score to the UBE scale (e.g., CA would be 288 to pass):
The calculator does a good job of estimating the scores of First Time Domestic examinees because there a good amount of data available. The calculator is less reliable with repeaters and foreign examinees because there isn’t as much data for these demographics. As I collect more data from examinees, the calculator will become more reliable, but currently only 3% of examinees who use the calculator follow up with me so it will be a while.
If the calculator estimates you to pass by 20+ points, you are likely going to pass assuming you studied full-time using a major bar review (e.g. Barbri/Kaplan/Themis). If the calculator estimates you to pass by 20+ points and you are at 65% correct or better in overall MBE practice, I would expect you to pass comfortably, no matter how difficult you think the exam was. Conversely, if your projections are below passing and your MBE practice was below 60% correct overall, you should consider lightly studying until results are released.