National Ketchup Day: How to Catch Up When You’re Behind in Bar Prep

Tommy Sangchompuphen
8 hours ago
3 min read

It’s June 5, so it's National Ketchup Day! While the food world may be celebrating America’s favorite condiment, bar takers should take a moment to focus on something else: how to "catch up."

See what I did there?

If you’re prepping for the July bar exam and falling behind in your commercial bar prep course, this post is for you. Being behind can feel overwhelming, especially when your dashboard shows unfinished assignments, skipped lectures, and untouched essays.

But here's the truth: You can catch up. You don’t need to panic right now, and you don’t need to do "catch up" on everything all at once. You just need a smart, focused plan to move forward.

In honor of National Ketchup Day, here are five practical strategies to help you catch up—without burning out.

Assess Your Situation Without Panic

Step one is simple: Stop guessing and start assessing. Open your bar prep dashboard or study calendar and take a realistic inventory. The key is to triage your missed work into three buckets:

Essential: Core MBE practice (Contracts, Torts, Civ Pro, Evidence, etc.), graded essays, and performance tests. Anything that builds the skills you’ll actually need on exam day.
Helpful: Supplemental videos, deep dives, and less frequently tested subjects. These can reinforce your learning but aren’t critical for recovery.
Optional: Review tasks that duplicate other assignments, passive content you’ve already grasped, or anything you’re tempted to do just to “check a box.”

Don’t waste time trying to go back and do everything. Instead, make intentional decisions about what to focus on from this point forward.

Switch from Passive Review to Active Practice

If you’re behind, the most efficient way to improve is to shift from input mode to output mode.

That means:

Stop binge-watching lectures.
Start answering questions and writing essays.
Prioritize applying the law over re-reading the law.

The bar exam is not testing how many hours you studied. It’s testing whether you can apply rules under pressure, quickly and accurately. Active learning—like doing practice MBE sets, writing out essay and MPT responses, and drafting short rule statements—builds that skill. Passive learning—like highlighting outlines or watching long videos—doesn’t stick nearly as well.

Tip: If you skipped a lecture, try practicing a few questions on that topic first. You may know more than you think—and you’ll learn what you actually need to review.

Use Targeted Catch-Up Blocks

Trying to “make up” everything you’ve missed in a single weekend is a recipe for stress and burnout. Instead, schedule a few catch-up blocks each week—ideally 90 minutes to 3 hours per block—with clear, realistic goals.

Structure your block like this:

30–45 minutes: Review outline or lecture on one topic.
30 minutes: Do 17 MBE questions or write out an essay on that topic.
30–45 minutes: Review explanatory answers, compare your essay to a sample response, and write key takeaways.

This approach reinforces comprehension, integrates practice, and keeps you from overloading your brain. You don’t need to do a marathon session—you need consistent recovery blocks.

Build a Forward-Focused Schedule (Not a Fantasy)

After falling behind, many students set out to “catch up” by doubling their workload: Watching two lectures a day instead of one, doing twice the questions, etc.

That strategy rarely works—and often leads to quitting entirely.

Instead, start fresh. Build a realistic study schedule you can maintain going forward. Ask yourself:

How many hours can I truly study each day?
When am I most productive?
What subjects or skills do I still need to strengthen?

Design your schedule around daily anchor tasks, such as:

1 core subject review (outline, flashcards, or lecture)
1 set of 17 to 34 MBE questions
1 essay or MPT
30 minutes of reviewing wrong answers or confusing material

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be doable, day in and day out.

Let Go of the “100% Completion” Mentality

This may be the most important advice of all: You do not need to finish your bar course 100% to pass.

Yes, bar review companies encourage full completion—but they also recognize that quality matters more than quantity. Many students have passed the bar with 65–75% completion rates—because they focused on the right things.

That includes:

Prioritizing practice over passivity
Strengthening weak areas instead of repeating strong ones
Writing and reviewing essays under timed conditions
Learning to manage fatigue, time, and stress across full-day simulations

Don’t measure your success by a progress bar. Measure it by how well you can perform the tasks you’ll face on test day: issue-spotting, writing clearly, managing time, and staying calm under pressure.