Two modules, one gate

Section-adaptive means: your performance on Module 1 selects which Module 2 you're given, and the two forms don't reach the same ceiling.

#What that changes

On a fixed-form test, every question is worth the same and the sensible strategy is to spread your effort evenly. On a section-adaptive test, Module 1 is worth more than Module 2 — not because its questions score higher, but because it decides which set of questions you'll be scored against for the rest of the section.

That has three consequences:

1. Never leave a Module 1 question unattempted. There's no wrong-answer penalty, so a blank is strictly worse than a guess. This is true everywhere on the test and most costly here.

2. Spend your buffer in Module 1, not Module 2. If you finish Module 1 with six minutes left, do not sit there. Go back to the questions you flagged. Those minutes are worth more than the same minutes in Module 2.

3. Don't try to read the routing mid-test. Students waste real attention in the first minutes of Module 2 trying to work out whether it "feels hard". You cannot reliably tell, the feeling is often wrong, and being told by your own nerves that you've been routed down is a good way to give up thirty points you still had. Answer the questions in front of you.

#The corollary people get wrong

"Module 1 matters more" is not "rush Module 1 to bank time". Accuracy in Module 1 is the thing being measured. Rushing it to have spare minutes later is exactly backwards — you're trading the valuable currency for the cheap one.

The right reading is: Module 1 gets your best, most careful work, and any leftover time goes back into checking it.

#About the numbers you'll see online

Tutors circulate specific caps — "the easy Module 2 caps you at 620". College Board doesn't publish the routing table or the scoring curve, so those figures are inferred from observed score reports, not documented. The mechanism is real and confirmed; the exact ceiling is an estimate. Plan around the mechanism, not the number.