“Six–Seven!” for Bar Takers: Why Some States Use 6, Others 7, and Why It Doesn't Matter

Tommy Sangchompuphen
3 days ago
2 min read

If you’ve heard Generation Alpha chanting “six–seven,” which Dictionary.com recently named its 2025 Word of the Year, then congratulations: You’re now holding the perfect icebreaker for explaining bar‑exam scoring to anyone. On the written portion of the Uniform Bar Exam (the six Multistate Essay Exam essays and the two Multistate Performance Test questions), jurisdictions don’t all use the same raw scale. Although a majority of UBE jurisdictions grade your answers on six rungs (e.g., 0-to-6), a small handful use seven rungs (e.g., 0-to-7), like Connecticut and Massachusetts.

So, yes, “six–seven” is more than a viral chant by Gen Alphas like my youngest son. It's two real‑life ladders your bar exam responses might climb.

But here's the calming truth: The height of the ladder matters far less than how high you climb relative to your peers. The National Conference of Bar Examiners trains graders to rank‑order answers—i.e., sort them into quality “piles”—and then assign numbers using whatever scale a jurisdiction has adopted (whether that's 1-to-5, 1-to-6, 1-to-7, 1-to-10, or even 20-to-80 ... I see you New York!).

In grader trainings, the NCBE often demonstrates with a 1-to-6 scale, but the point isn’t the specific digits. Rather, it's the relative placement of your answer in that stack. What you’re seeing when you get a raw number on an essay is a height mark on a wall: “this answer is near the top pile,” “this one’s in the middle,” “this one needs work.” A 5 on a 1-to-7 scale and a 5 on a 1-to-6 scale aren’t directly comparable across states because those numbers are just labels on local ladders.

The label is local. The ranking is universal.

From Raw to UBE: Relative Grading & Scaling

After graders finish sorting and labeling, your written raw total (MEE + MPT) is scaled to the MBE's 0-to-200 scaled point system so everyone lands on a common scaled scoreboard. That’s how you end up with a single UBE scaled score out of 400 points. The UBE's weighting is MBE 50%, MEE 30%, MPT 20%. This combination of these three weighted components is then compared against your jurisdiction’s minimum passing score (e.g., 270 in Ohio). This scaling step is the great equalizer because it’s designed so differences in raw scales (six vs. seven points, tighter vs. wider spreads) don’t warp the final result.

Think about it this way: Graders rank you locally (six vs. seven rungs is just a dialect), then scale your written performance to the MBE so your final UBE scaled score means the same thing across different administrations and different jurisdictions.

That’s precisely why the NCBE emphasizes relative grading and scaling. You don’t have to reverse‑engineer what a “4” in State A equals in State B.