Minimum UBE passing scores by state range from 260 to 270 on the 400-point Uniform Bar Examination scale, and the 41 UBE jurisdictions cluster into five tiers within that span. A score of 270 clears every participating jurisdiction. A 260 clears seven. Where your target state sits inside that range determines how much margin you have on exam day and whether a score earned in one jurisdiction will transfer to another.
Passing Scores by Jurisdiction
Each jurisdiction’s supreme court or bar admissions board sets its own cutoff. The current tiers are as follows.1National Conference of Bar Examiners. UBE Minimum Scores
- 260: Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah
- 264: Indiana
- 266: Connecticut, District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Washington, Virgin Islands
- 268: Michigan
- 270: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming
A 270 licenses you anywhere in UBE territory. A 266 opens fourteen jurisdictions plus the Virgin Islands. A 260 opens seven. If you fall between tiers, you qualify in some places but not others, so your target jurisdiction should be settled before you build a study plan.
The 260 Tier
The seven lowest-threshold jurisdictions give the widest entry point. Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah all accept a 260.1National Conference of Bar Examiners. UBE Minimum Scores Getting admitted in one of these states doesn’t block you from retaking the exam later to pursue a higher-threshold state.
The 270 Tier
Eighteen jurisdictions require the top score, and several large legal markets sit in this group, including Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. The ten-point gap between 260 and 270 is a meaningful difference in exam performance, so aiming for a bare minimum in a 260 state and hoping to transfer up later is a weak plan.
How the Score Is Built
The UBE total is a weighted composite of three components, not an average. The Multistate Bar Examination (multiple choice) is 50 percent of the score. The Multistate Essay Examination is 30 percent, and the two Multistate Performance Test tasks together are 20 percent.2National Conference of Bar Examiners. About the UBE Every UBE jurisdiction uses this same weighting, which is what makes a score portable. Strong multiple-choice performance can partially offset weaker writing, and vice versa.
How Long a Score Stays Valid
A passing UBE score has a shelf life, and each jurisdiction sets its own. Texas gives you five years from the exam date to file an application using the score.3Texas Board of Law Examiners. Frequently Asked Questions Pennsylvania allows 30 months.4Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners. FAQs UBE Other jurisdictions sit at various points in between, and some measure the window to the application filing date while others measure to the date of admission.
Miss the window and the result is blunt. The jurisdiction rejects the transfer, and you retake the entire exam. There’s generally no appeal and no grandfather clause. Check your target state’s score age as soon as you receive your results, and file early enough that administrative delays don’t eat your deadline.
Transferring a Score to Another Jurisdiction
Score transfer runs through NCBE. You start in your NCBE account by providing your identification number, date of birth, exam administration date, and the jurisdiction where you originally tested. NCBE then sends an official transcript directly to the destination bar admissions office. Personal copies and screenshots are not accepted. The NCBE transcript fee is $30.5National Conference of Bar Examiners. UBE Score Services
That $30 is the small part of the bill. Each destination jurisdiction charges its own application fee for admission by score transfer, and those fees generally run into the hundreds or low thousands of dollars. Budget for both.
States That Don’t Use the UBE
A UBE score is useless in jurisdictions that don’t participate. California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia all administer their own bar exams.6National Conference of Bar Examiners. UBE Jurisdictions Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, and South Dakota also sit outside the UBE system. To practice in any of these states, you sit for its own exam, or in some cases qualify through practice experience. Several of these non-UBE states have committed to adopting the NextGen bar exam in 2027 or 2028, which may eventually bring them into a portable-score framework.
What Changes With the NextGen Bar Exam
The current UBE is being phased out. NCBE’s NextGen bar exam launches in July 2026 in a first wave that includes Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Washington, and four U.S. territories.7National Conference of Bar Examiners. NextGen Bar Exam A larger group follows in July 2027, including Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, and Minnesota. By July 2028, the remaining jurisdictions are scheduled to switch, including New York, Texas, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania.
NextGen uses a different scale of 500 to 750, replacing the 400-point scale. Each jurisdiction will set its own passing score on the new scale, and the District of Columbia has already announced a NextGen minimum of 616.8District of Columbia Bar Admissions. DC Bar Admissions Scores remain portable between participating jurisdictions under the new system.7National Conference of Bar Examiners. NextGen Bar Exam
The overlap period is where planning gets tricky. If you take the current UBE in February 2026, the score works in jurisdictions still using the old format, but a state that switches to NextGen that July may not accept it for transfer later. Match your target jurisdiction’s adoption date against your score’s validity window before you rely on a transfer.