I chose the title of this post with intention. What I'm about to outline is *an approach to answering questions on the MBE, rather than *the approach. People find different approaches useful, and even as I teach students, we work together to figure out the best individual approach. But that said, I do have a preference, and it's outlined below:
Step 1: Read the Call of the Question:
On the MBE, for the most part though not always, the test makers will assign you one of two characters. You'll either be a judge or a lawyer. A judge question is more objectively stated; the question might read something like "who should prevail?" A lawyer question, on the other hand, requires that you take a side and determine the best argument for that side. Such a question might read "what is the best argument for the plaintiff prevailing?"
Reading the call of the question will often provide you with your role. In addition, when practicing for the MBE, at least at the beginning, students will often practice subject by subject. But, on the exam, the cards are thoroughly shuffled, such that all the subjects are jumbled throughout. The call will often clue you in to the subject you're dealing with in a specific question, and that gives you a slight advantage moving on to the facts.
In general, not reading the call of the question and jumping right into the facts is a bit like getting into a car and driving somewhere with no destination in mind. You sort of find your way as you're traveling throughout the facts. Reading the call gives you an idea of where the question is headed.
Step 2: Read the Facts:
This here is a rather straight forward step. Before beginning to attempt to answer the question, you've got to read the facts. This step does, however, relate back to step 1. If you've determined that your role is as a lawyer, you should read the facts with an eye towards advocating for whichever "client" they've assigned you. On the other hand, we'd hope that judges would read the facts more objectively, and you should do the same if your role is as a judge in the question.
Step 3: Eliminate the Two Worst Answers:
After reading the facts, students often begin hunting for the correct answer. Completely natural to do so, but I recommend otherwise. On the MBE, most questions present you with two roads, so to speak, in the answer choices. One road might be the "yes" road, and one the "no" road. Or one might be the "overruled" road, and one the "sustained" road. Many other possibilities as well, but the idea is that two answers point one way, and two answers point another. After reading the facts, the hope is that you'll have an idea which road the correct answer falls within. And then you should first go down the other road.
The reason for going down the other road is that the goal is to eliminate answers, rather than to hunt down the perfect answer. On this test, there are three answers that are so wrong that they cannot even be argued by any reasonable person as correct. If any one answer other than the correct answer could be argued as correct, then the question is flawed. And these questions are under heavy scrutiny prior to making it onto the exam. Flawed questions are very rare.
Because three answers must be so wrong that no reasonable person can argue them as correct, it's easier to eliminate wrong answers than it is to try to find the perfect answer. In fact, the perfect answer might not be there! Instead, one answer is not definitely wrong. That's worth understanding well, and it's what makes this a challenging exam. The right answer is simply the answer that is not definitely wrong.
Go down the road where you do not believe the correct answer resides. Read those two answers, and unless they convince you otherwise (be open to this, of course), cross them out. You'll then be down to two answers, one correct, and one incorrect.
Step 4: Eliminate One More Answer:
This is tough, no getting around it. You'll now need to travel down the road where you believe the correct answer resides, and eliminate one of the two answers residing on that road. But even with just two answers, the idea is not to spot the right one and choose it. The logic here is the same as it was in step 3. Even with two answers remaining, one of those two answers is so wrong that no reasonable person can argue it as correct. You've got to examine the two remaining answers and find something wrong with one of them. When you've found something wrong with one of the two answers, get rid of it. Only the correct answer remains.
Step 5: Choose the Last Answer Standing:
At this point, you've eliminate three of the four answer choices. I wouldn't recommend blindly picking the answer that's left. But it's important to understand that most of the work and strategy went into eliminating the others, so the presumption should be that the answer choice left is "correct" as that word applies on this test. In other words, don't be so quick to decide that one of the answers you've already eliminated is better. The idea here is to confirm that the answer not eliminated does not have any blatant flaws. As long as the answer is not obviously wrong, and you're confident that you've found something in each of the other answers that makes each of those other answers wrong, choose the last answer standing. That answer may not be perfect, but it's perfect enough.
