How many questions can I miss on the SAT® and still get a 1500?

There is no fixed number, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. The digital SAT is adaptive and it is scored with a statistical model, not by counting. What you can know is this: for a 1500 you need to reach the harder second module in both sections, and which questions you miss matters as much as how many.

Why counting doesn’t work

Each section has two modules. How you do on the first decides whether your second module is harder or easier. A student who reaches the harder module can earn a top score; a student routed to the easier one has a lower ceiling, however well they do on it. So a few mistakes in the first module carry a weight that the same mistakes later do not: they can change which test you take for the rest of the section.

Then the score itself is estimated from the whole pattern of your answers, taking into account how difficult each question is. Two students with the same number of wrong answers can get different scores. This is also why two students who both do very well can see different scores near the top: the model estimates your level from the pattern of your answers, not just by counting them.

One example

A mistake like that on an easy question in the first module is expensive twice: it counts against you in the scoring, and a couple of them can decide your second module. Missing a genuinely hard question late in the section usually costs less. That is the opposite of how most students spend their review time — they study the hardest questions and wave away the easy ones they “knew”.

What to aim for instead of a number

Aim for a first module in each section with no easy questions lost. That means reading the last line of every question twice, and treating an easy question you got wrong as the most important item in your review, not the least.

Then look at your wrong answers by reason, not by topic. At the 1500 level, the reasons are usually few and they repeat. Knowing yours is worth more than any estimate of how many misses you can afford.

This happens to a lot of people. What you don't know yet is whether it happens to you, and with which one. Sixteen questions will tell you.

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