How to Check Your Pennsylvania Bar Exam Results
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Office of Public Integrity and Intervention posts bar exam results through its online portal. You need your admit number, which was in your email correspondence from the Board of Law Examiners, and your Social Security number. Log into the OPII website, enter both pieces of information, and the score displays on screen. That is it. There is no email notification. They do not mail letters. You have to check yourself on the date they announce. Results for the July 2022 exam were released in late September, around the 28th or 29th. The exact date shifts slightly year to year, so checking the OPII website directly is more reliable than relying on bar prep school emails, which sometimes run a day behind. I found out by refreshing the portal at 6:15 AM on the announcement morning. My score was right there. No fanfare. Here is something most first-time takers miss. The score you see is a composite. It combines your UBE scaled score with the Pennsylvania-specific components, which include the MEE essays and the MPRE separately. The composite passing threshold is what matters for admission. If your UBE scaled score looks low but you passed, it is often because the state-specific writing sections pulled the composite up. Do not panic over the raw UBE number alone.
I ran into a specific problem once where the portal would not load my result. My admit number and SSN were correct. I had not made any typos. The page just timed out. I discovered that the server was choking because every candidate was trying to access it within the same fifteen-minute window after the announcement. I waited about forty-five minutes, tried again at a less popular hour like 11 PM, and it worked immediately. If you are getting error messages right at announcement time, step away from the computer for a while. It is not you. It is the server load. The official passing score for the UBE portion in Pennsylvania is 130 for the MBE, 136 for MPT and MEE combined, and 135 for the overall composite. You do not need to pass each section independently in a single sitting — the UBE allows score banking across multiple exam administrations, but Pennsylvania requires you to complete all components within a five-year rolling window. I watched a candidate argue with a bar prep advisor about this. The advisor insisted she needed to pass each section separately to qualify. She did not. The composite is what counts for admission, though individual component scores matter if you need to retake something later. Score verification is another thing people waste time on. If you believe there has been an error, you can request a review, but the margin for that is extremely narrow. You have to file within thirty days of the result posting. The review only checks for administrative mistakes like incorrect SSN application or scoring calculation errors. It does not regrade your essays. In my experience, the success rate on these reviews is well under five percent. Most people who file one just want to hear that someone looked at their work. That is not how the process works.
Once your results post, you should pull a copy of the score report and save it as a PDF. The portal does not guarantee permanent access to the score history page. I lost mine after six months when I was trying to reference it for a character and fitness application. Ended up having to submit a formal records request to the Board of Law Examiners, which took another three weeks. Just screenshot it or print it immediately. If you did not pass, the notification email from the Board will include your component breakdown. Use it to decide which sections to retake. The UBE score bank means you do not have to restart the entire exam. But you also only have five years to clear everything, so budget your attempts carefully. Taking the next administration is not automatically the best move if you need more time on the MEE. A lot of candidates burn through their allowed sittings because they jump into the next July or February without a solid study plan for their weak areas. For anyone reading this after the fact who needs official documentation of their results, the OPII maintains historical result postings. You can request an official transcript through the Board of Law Examiners if you need it for bar admission in another jurisdiction. That process takes roughly two to three weeks and costs fifteen dollars. Budget for that if you are applying for mobility across state lines.
Get the Full Details
