We found no official scoreboard for the hardest state bar exam.
The closest measures are the minimum passing score a jurisdiction sets and the share of test takers who pass.
On the legacy Uniform Bar Examination, the minimum scores on NCBE's table run from 260 to 270 on the 400-point scale — and California, which never adopted the UBE, sits outside that table entirely.
Here is what those numbers can and cannot tell you, and why your target job market should weigh more than either.
Which state has the hardest bar exam?
Start with what can actually be measured.
Forty-two jurisdictions have adopted the UBE since 2011, and NCBE's minimum score table lists 41 of them — Wisconsin, which first gave the UBE in July 2026, is not on it.
On the legacy UBE those minimums run from 260 to 270 on the 400-point scale, and the states at 270 — the top of NCBE's range — include Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado and Massachusetts.
If the cut is your measuring stick, those states set the highest bar.
For what the exam itself contains and who runs it, the bar exam overview covers the basics.
Here is NCBE's legacy UBE minimum score table, accessed October 2026:
| Minimum score | Jurisdictions |
|---|---|
| 260 | Alabama, Iowa*, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah |
| 264 | Indiana |
| 266 | Connecticut, District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, 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 |
* Iowa's minimum is 260 for the July 2026 and later legacy UBE administrations; it was 266 for exams before that.
And read the list knowing it is a snapshot: Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Washington and the Virgin Islands switched to the NextGen UBE in July 2026, so the legacy minimum shown for each applies to exams taken before the switch.
A cut score is also a threshold, not a difficulty rating.
On the legacy UBE, each jurisdiction grades its own essay and performance-test answers, those scores are scaled to the MBE, which NCBE scores, and some jurisdictions add a state-specific law component on top of the exam.
Two states with the same minimum are not automatically the same test.
Then there is the group the table cannot rank at all: California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, South Dakota and Virginia never adopted the UBE, and neither did Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau and Puerto Rico.
None of the 14 gives the UBE, so the cut-score table above cannot rank them.
The California bar exam sits entirely outside this table; our guide covers how admission works there.
Cut scores move — confirm before you rely on one
Which state has the easiest bar exam?
The same table answers the mirror question, with the same caveats.
At the bottom, the minimum is 260: Alabama, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah.
That is the floor of NCBE's legacy range — no jurisdiction on the table requires less.
A low cut still is not an easy exam.
The legacy UBE has the same three components wherever it is given — the MEE, two MPT tasks and the MBE, weighted 30%, 20% and 50% respectively — and each jurisdiction grades its own essays and performance tasks.
Some add a state-law component on top, and the outcome side differs too: how many test takers actually clear the bar is the state-by-state pass rates question, not a cut-score question.
The practical upside of a low cut is portability.
Each jurisdiction applies its minimum to transferred scores as well as to its own test-takers, and a score that fell short where you sat can still transfer if it meets the receiving jurisdiction's passing score — the same total can miss a 270 state's cut and clear a 260 one.
The full state-by-state list lives in our UBE cut scores guide.
Cut score vs pass rate
The two numbers behind every hardest-bar-exam claim measure different things.
A cut score is the threshold: a number each UBE jurisdiction sets on its own authority (on the 400-point scale, for the legacy UBE), applied to test-takers and transferees alike.
A pass rate is the outcome: the share of test takers who cleared that threshold in an administration.
They can diverge because a pass rate folds the pool in with the threshold.
Two jurisdictions with the same 270 cut can post different rates if the people sitting the exam differ — which is why a high cut alone does not settle which exam is hardest, and why neither number is an official difficulty ranking.
Read them together: the cut says how high the bar sits, the pass rates say how many clear it.
Both numbers describe an exam in transition.
The legacy UBE runs twelve hours over two days; the NextGen UBE rolling out in its place runs nine hours over 1.5 days.
Most jurisdictions move to the new exam between July 2026 and July 2028, so a hardest-to-easiest comparison built on one format ages quickly.
Should you pick a state by difficulty?
Not on its own.
Admission runs jurisdiction by jurisdiction: each UBE jurisdiction independently decides who may sit and be admitted, its educational requirements, character and fitness, retake limits, its passing score and how long an incoming score stays accepted.
Two states with the same minimum can still differ on every one of those, and the differences compound once you look past the exam:
- Your score ages out on the receiving state's clock. Incoming-score windows run from 2 years (North Dakota, Rhode Island) to 5 years (Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Texas), with most jurisdictions at 3.
- A transfer does not skip character and fitness. The receiving jurisdiction runs its own review, whatever your score is.
- Some states test their own law. A separate jurisdiction-specific component — a test, a course, or both — sits on top of the UBE where it is required.
- Transfers have a price. NCBE charges $30 for each official score transcript.
The better order runs opposite to the search query: pick where you want to practice, then work backward to that state's cut score and its other admission gates.
Difficulty is a test-day problem; licensure decides where you can work.
A portable UBE score widens the options around that choice — it does not make the choice for you.
Where are the jobs?
A law license does not travel on its own — each jurisdiction admits on its own terms — so the state you clear the bar in frames which openings you can take.
That is the strongest argument against choosing a state by difficulty: the exam is one administration; the job market is the career.
Work the question in that order.
Pick the city and practice area you want, look at who is hiring there — browse current attorney jobs to see which markets have openings — then confirm that state's minimum score and its other admission requirements before you commit to sitting there.
A low-cut state you have no intention of working in buys you little; a 270 state with the clients you want may be worth the extra points.
The bridge between the two questions is the score-transfer system: a portable UBE result, applied against each receiving jurisdiction's own cut, character-and-fitness process and score-age window.
Used deliberately, it lets the job search and the exam search point at the same state instead of working against each other.
Career information, not legal advice. Cut scores, transfer rules and admission requirements change — confirm the current requirements with the bar admission authority in the state where you plan to test or transfer.