You transfer a UBE score by ordering an official score transcript from NCBE — $30 per transcript — and filing an admission application in the new jurisdiction, which applies its own passing score, its own score-age limit and its own character and fitness review.
Scores are portable for 2 to 5 years depending on the state, and most jurisdictions accept them for 3 years.
What does transferring a UBE score mean?
The UBE is the Uniform Bar Examination coordinated by the NCBE: the MBE, the MEE and two MPT tasks, combined into one score on the legacy UBE's 400-point scale and weighted 50% MBE, 30% MEE and 20% MPT.
Transferring that score means sending it — on an official NCBE transcript — to a UBE jurisdiction other than the one where you tested, and asking that jurisdiction to admit you on the strength of it.
The score travels.
The admission decision does not: the receiving state re-makes every decision the exam result does not cover.
Three rules define what actually transfers.
First, a portable score only exists if you took the MEE, the MPT and the MBE in the same UBE jurisdiction and in the same administration — transferring a standalone MBE score does not produce a portable UBE score.
Second, the receiving jurisdiction applies its own minimum passing score, the same minimum its own examinees face; legacy UBE minimums range from 260 to 270 on the 400-point scale.
Third, a score that fell short where you tested is not dead on arrival — UBE jurisdictions accept transferred scores that meet their own passing standard whether or not the score met the standard in the testing jurisdiction.
That last rule is the one applicants underestimate.
The same score can clear one UBE jurisdiction's minimum and fall short of another's, because every jurisdiction sets the number for itself.
The current minimums, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, are in our UBE passing score by state guide.
How long is a score portable?
A UBE score does not stay transferable forever.
Each jurisdiction caps the maximum age of a transferred score, and the windows vary widely: 2 years in North Dakota and Rhode Island at the short end, 5 years in Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, DC, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio and Texas at the long end.
Most jurisdictions use 3 years.
Between the poles, NCBE's table shows several odd counts: 25 months in Alabama, 30 months in Pennsylvania, 37 months in Idaho, 40 months in Washington, and 4 years in Illinois.
Six jurisdictions — Colorado, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming — list "3 years/5 years," and Iowa lists "2 years/5 years": two windows, where the longer one comes with practice experience.
A score older than the receiving jurisdiction's maximum cannot be transferred there, so the window you have is the one set by the state you are moving to, not the state you tested in.
The table is also in motion.
NCBE lists 42 jurisdictions that have adopted the UBE over all; as of October 2026, 35 still administer the legacy exam, which NCBE says it will give through February 2028.
On the replacing exam, NCBE says NextGen UBE scores are portable to jurisdictions that accept them — and some jurisdictions still giving the legacy UBE already accept transferred NextGen scores.
The exam you took and the exam your target state now gives may not be the same exam, which is why the next steps start with checking the destination rather than NCBE's transcript form.
How to request a transfer from NCBE
NCBE handles the score; the receiving jurisdiction handles the admission.
The transfer itself is a transcript request plus that state's own application, in roughly this order:
Confirm the destination's transfer rules
Before you pay for anything, confirm that the jurisdiction accepts transferred scores, and note its minimum passing score and its maximum score age. For the NextGen UBE, NCBE's adoption table lists, per jurisdiction, the first administration, the passing score, the date it starts accepting transfers and the minimum transferred score it accepts.Order the Official Bar Exam Score Transcript
NCBE charges $30 for each Official Bar Exam Score Transcript — the document used to transfer a legacy UBE, a NextGen UBE or an MBE score.File the receiving jurisdiction's application
A transferred score does not file anything for you. Each UBE jurisdiction independently decides who may sit and be admitted, along with its educational requirements, retake limits and local-law components — confirm the destination's application requirements with its admitting authority.Complete character and fitness in the new state
Each jurisdiction makes its own character and fitness decisions, so the state you transfer to runs its own review. Build the application timeline around it rather than around the transcript.
On cost: the $30 is NCBE's fee for each Official Bar Exam Score Transcript — it does not cover the destination's admission application.
Check the destination's current fee schedule with its admitting authority before you file.
If your score has aged out of a destination's window, no transcript fixes that.
The options then include a destination that still accepts your score's age, a fresh exam sitting (each jurisdiction sets its own retake limits) or, if you are already licensed elsewhere, admission on motion where the destination provides it.
Confirm before you order
What else the new state requires
Character and fitness is the big one: transferring a UBE score does not skip character and fitness, because each receiving jurisdiction runs its own review and makes its own decisions.
Your exam result travels — no character and fitness clearance travels with it, and the state you transfer to runs its own review regardless of how the process went where you tested.
Some UBE jurisdictions also require a separate jurisdiction-specific law component — a test, a course, or both — before admission.
More broadly, each UBE jurisdiction still independently decides who may sit and be admitted, educational requirements, character and fitness, retake limits, ADA accommodations, local-law components, passing scores and how long incoming scores are accepted.
The UBE standardizes the score; it does not standardize admission.
On the NextGen side, timing rules are already splitting jurisdictions.
Florida and New York will not accept NextGen transfer scores earned from any administration before July 2028, and Hawaii is listed as "Not accepting."
NCBE's NextGen adoption table — last updated September 25, 2026 — is the place to check a specific jurisdiction's date for accepting transfers and its minimum transferred score.
One trap to avoid: legacy UBE scores sit on the 400-point scale and NextGen UBE scores sit on a 500–750 scale, and NCBE says the two should not be compared directly.
A 270 legacy score and a NextGen score in the 610–620 range — where most jurisdictions have set their passing scores — are numbers on different scales, not equivalent results.
Transfer vs admission on motion
Transferring a UBE score is the route for an applicant whose exam score is what the new jurisdiction will evaluate.
Admission on motion is a different door: the route a jurisdiction can provide for an attorney already licensed in another one, based on that license and a practice record rather than a new exam score — per NCBE's jurisdiction pages, 43 jurisdictions among the states and DC provide it and eight states have no rules providing for it.
How motion admission works, which states offer it and what each requires is its own topic — see our admission on motion guide for that side.
For a lateral move, the practical difference is what you can bring to the table today.
A recent, portable UBE score travels by transcript to any UBE jurisdiction that accepts transferred scores and whose minimum and score-age window it clears, which is useful when a lateral move crosses state lines and you want the second license on your own timeline.
Admission on motion depends on the license and practice history you already have.
If you are weighing both routes, the deciding facts are when you last sat for the exam and where you are currently admitted — and for a practice you want to build in more than one state, it is worth checking both doors in each target state before you commit to either.
Career information, not legal advice: transfer rules, score-age windows and fees change, so confirm the current requirements with the bar admission authority in the jurisdiction where you want to practice.