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UBE score transfer works on one hard rule: you must take the MEE, MPT and MBE in the same jurisdiction at the same administration. A receiving jurisdiction accepts any score meeting its own standard, even one that failed where you sat it. Validity runs two to five years.
You apply for admission in the receiving jurisdiction and have NCBE send an Official Bar Exam Score Transcript, which costs $30 (https://www.ncbex.org/score-services).
There is one mechanical requirement people lose portability by missing. You must have taken all portions, the MEE, MPT and MBE, in the same UBE jurisdiction and in the same administration (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-score-portability).
NCBE's framing of what a transfer buys you is deliberately narrow: a portable score can be used to SEEK admission elsewhere, and NCBE advises consulting the jurisdiction directly. It is not admission.
Yes, if it clears the receiving jurisdiction's own standard. This is the most useful and least known fact about portability.
A UBE jurisdiction will accept a transferred score that meets its own passing standard whether or not that score passed where it was earned (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-score-portability).
So a 262 that failed in a 270 jurisdiction is a passing score in any of the ten jurisdictions at 260. Before you register for a retake, check whether your existing score already passes somewhere you would actually practise.
Between two and five years, set by each receiving jurisdiction rather than by NCBE (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-maximum-score-age).
The short end is two years in North Dakota and Rhode Island, and 25 months in Alabama. Seventeen jurisdictions including New York, Massachusetts and Michigan run three years. Ten including Alaska, Arizona and Texas run five.
Several run tiered windows where a longer period applies to applicants with qualifying practice experience, notably Colorado, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming at three or five years, and Iowa at two or five.
WindowJurisdictions25 monthsAlabama2 yearsNorth Dakota, Rhode Island3 yearsSeventeen jurisdictions including New York, Massachusetts and Michigan5 yearsTen jurisdictions including Alaska, Arizona and TexasTiered, 2 or 3 versus 5 yearsColorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Wyoming
From NCBE's maximum score age page (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-maximum-score-age) and Chart 5 (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-5/). Verified July 27, 2026. NCBE never explains the dual notation on tiered windows and the underlying conditions differ materially by state, so confirm yours directly.
We found four unresolved conflicts inside NCBE's own materials on validity windows and we publish them as conflicts rather than picking a number.
Alabama reads 36 months on Chart 5 and 25 months on the score age page. Massachusetts reads five years in one place and three in the other.
New Mexico reads 60 months versus three years. North Dakota reads two to five years versus a flat two.
Utah's and Vermont's dual windows on the score age page are demonstrably stale against both states' current rules. If your plan depends on a window, get it from your board in writing.
Character and fitness. Only the score is portable, and this catches people who assume a clean file follows them.
NCBE's own fee schedule presupposes a new report per jurisdiction: Category V charges $250 where a complete report was previously prepared for a DIFFERENT jurisdiction, which is a reduced fee for a new report rather than a waiver (https://www.ncbex.org/character-fitness/DC/fee-schedule).
Chart 5 makes the same point from the other side, listing transferred-score application fees for several jurisdictions as 'plus C and F fee' (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-5/).
Budget accordingly. A transfer is a $30 transcript plus a full character and fitness investigation plus the receiving jurisdiction's application fee, and often a state law component on top.
Twenty-four jurisdictions bar concurrent application while seventeen permit it (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-maximum-score-age).
That matters if you were planning to file in two places at once to hedge. In half the country you cannot.
It also interacts badly with a short validity window: if you cannot apply concurrently and your score expires in two years, a slow character and fitness investigation can consume the whole window.
This page is one spoke of a cluster. The hub is our NextGen bar exam pillar, which carries the whole transition in one place and links every spoke including this one.
The two most closely related pages here are transfer nextgen score to ube state and admission on motion vs score transfer.
Everything across the cluster is drawn from the same verified fact set and carries the same verified-as-of date, so the numbers agree with each other by construction rather than by coincidence.
Every fact here was read on NCBE's own pages or the jurisdiction's own board or supreme court pages on July 27, 2026. No prep company, no aggregator, no forum and no news summary was used as a source for anything.
Where a jurisdiction's own site was unreachable, robots-blocked or JavaScript-gated, we say the fact rests on NCBE alone rather than presenting it as confirmed. That happened more often than you would expect and it is named on the page each time.
Where two official sources disagree, we publish the conflict and name which one we treat as operational. We do not pick quietly and we do not average them.
Where nothing is published, the page says not yet published by the board. It never says a number we worked out ourselves, because an estimate that looks like a disclosure is worse than a gap.
It cannot tell you what your own board will do. Jurisdictions set their own dates, fees, cut scores, deadlines and admission rules, and NCBE compiles those decisions rather than making them.
It cannot substitute for reading your jurisdiction's rule text. Compilation charts are an index into the rules, not the rules, and every material decision should be checked against the authority itself.
The first is adoption. Supreme courts issue orders on their own schedule and NCBE's compilation pages lag them, which is exactly what happened with California in July 2026.
The second is the calendar. Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or 2027 fees at verification, and several were serving prior-cycle pages without saying so.
The third is cut scores. NCBE states on its own page that jurisdictions are currently evaluating its recommended NextGen range (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores), so that list grows month by month.
None of those three settles before autumn. Treat September as the re-check point for anything on this page that carries a date or a number.
Start at NCBE's jurisdiction index (https://www.ncbex.org/jurisdictions) to find the name of your admitting authority, which is often not the state bar association and is sometimes a board sitting under the supreme court.
Then go to that authority's own site and look for a dated page. A page with no cycle label is the warning sign, not the exception; several boards serve prior-cycle information with no year on it anywhere.
Cross-check the deadlines page against the program page, because they disagree more often than they should. We found boards contradicting themselves on dates in the same week.
If the two disagree and you cannot tell which is current, email the board and keep the reply. A dated email from the board is better evidence than any table, including this one.
One framing point that governs this whole page. The first NextGen administration was July 28 and 29, 2026 (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen), so at the time of writing no NextGen exam had been sat anywhere in the world and no results existed. There is no NextGen pass rate, no score distribution, no repeater data and no retrospective on how it went, and anyone offering you one is inventing it.
That matters on this page specifically, because the transition is the reason any of it is moving. Structure, dates and published policy are reportable now; outcomes are not.
NCBE has not published a NextGen mean or standard deviation either. The figures are absent from the Guidance Brief, the Examinees' Guide, the Blueprint and every scoring page (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/FOR%20RELEASE%20NCBE%20NextGen%20Guidance%20Brief-Recommended%20Passing%20Score%20Range-2.pdf), which is worth knowing before you read anyone's confident claim about difficulty.
Open your own jurisdiction's board page and confirm every date and number on this page against it.
Where this page says not yet published, check again in September, which is when most boards refresh.
If your plan turns on a figure here, get it from the board in writing rather than from any table.
Everything on this page about UBE score transfer was read on the source pages listed inline on July 27, 2026, and the date is on the page rather than buried in a footer because this material moves faster than anything else we publish.
Three separate clocks are running against it. Supreme courts issue adoption orders and NCBE's own pages lag them.
Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or fees. NextGen passing scores are being set jurisdiction by jurisdiction right now, and NCBE says so on its own page (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores).
Re-check your own jurisdiction's board before you rely on any date or number here, including ours. A figure quoted anywhere without a cycle label and a date attached is unverified by definition.
Apply in the receiving jurisdiction and order an Official Bar Exam Score Transcript from NCBE at $30. You must have taken the MEE, MPT and MBE in the same jurisdiction at the same administration for the score to be portable.
Yes, if it meets the receiving jurisdiction's standard. A 262 that failed in a 270 state passes in any of the ten states at 260.
Two to five years depending on the receiving jurisdiction. Two years in North Dakota and Rhode Island, 25 months in Alabama, three years in seventeen jurisdictions, five in ten others.
No. Only the score is portable. The receiving jurisdiction runs a full character and fitness investigation again, and NCBE charges a reduced fee for a new report rather than waiving it.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026