.png)
When to take the MPRE: earlier than most people do, because NCBE sets no eligibility requirement at all and you may sit it before graduating. Six jurisdictions require a passing score before the bar exam. Validity is set locally and runs from about two years to unlimited.
Earlier than most people do, because NCBE imposes no eligibility requirement at all and several jurisdictions require a passing score before you sit the bar exam.
There is no minimum credit-hour requirement, no year-in-school requirement, no graduation requirement, and not even a law school enrollment requirement (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpre/about-mpre).
Registration requires only an NCBE Account and payment.
The practical answer for most students is the summer after 1L or during 2L, which clears it before the semester that matters most and leaves retake room.
Yes, and in most cases you should.
California expressly allows it any time after completing the first year of law study (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpre/about-mpre).
Taking it early has a structural advantage that has nothing to do with the content. It removes one hard deadline from your bar-exam summer, which is the most compressed period in the whole licensure process.
It also gives you retake room. With three administrations a year and no national attempt cap, an early first attempt means a second one is a scheduling question rather than a crisis.
Not nationally. Validity is set by each jurisdiction and ranges from about two years to unlimited (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-6/).
Kentucky states no expiration date for a score of 80 or above. Oklahoma states valid for an unlimited period of time. Maine's fifteen-year lookback is the longest finite window found.
That range is the reason the take-it-early advice is not universal. In a two-year-window jurisdiction, sitting it in your 1L summer can mean sitting it twice.
This is the group for whom timing is not optional (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-6/).
Kentucky, Massachusetts, Idaho and Oregon require the MPRE before the bar exam or before applying, with Oregon specifying within 36 months prior to applying.
Kansas and South Dakota also require it in advance, with South Dakota specifying within 28 months prior.
If you are in one of those, work backwards from the bar application deadline rather than from the exam date, and add the roughly five weeks NCBE takes to release scores.
ConsiderationWhat it means for timingNo eligibility requirementYou can sit it before graduating, and before finishing 1L in some casesThree administrations a yearA retake is a scheduling question, not a lost cycleAbout five weeks to score releaseBuild that into any pre-application deadlineJurisdiction validity windowTwo years to unlimited; the short end punishes taking it too earlyRequired before the bar exam in six jurisdictionsKentucky, Massachusetts, Idaho, Oregon, Kansas, South Dakota
From NCBE's MPRE pages (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpre/about-mpre, https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpre/mpre-scores) and Chart 6 (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-6/). Verified July 27, 2026.
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.
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 what is the mpre and mpre dates, registration and fees.
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.
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 MPRE timing 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.
Usually the summer after 1L or during 2L. NCBE imposes no eligibility requirement at all, so you can sit it early, and doing so removes a deadline from your bar-exam summer.
Yes. There is no credit-hour, year-in-school, graduation or even enrollment requirement. California expressly allows it after the first year of law study.
By jurisdiction, from about two years to unlimited. Kentucky and Oklahoma state no expiry; Maine allows fifteen years. In a short-window jurisdiction, sitting too early can mean sitting twice.
Kentucky, Massachusetts, Idaho, Oregon, Kansas and South Dakota require it before the exam or before applying, with Oregon at 36 months prior and South Dakota at 28.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026