A score that will not rise above a band is the most complained about stage of preparation, and the cause is usually not where it is assumed to be.
First cause: repetition without analysis
Answering hundreds of questions and never examining the errors. This turns making the same mistake repeatedly into a solid habit.
A student who analyses thirty questions deeply moves faster than one who answers a hundred and moves on. The measure is not the number of repetitions but the lesson taken from each error.
Second cause: studying the wrong section
Students prefer to study the section they are comfortable in, because that is where progress feels visible.
But what raises the score is the weak section. A student whose mathematics is already high adds very little by studying mathematics.
Third cause: not separating the error class
Not knowing, misreading and running out of time look identical as lost marks and require three different responses.
Going through one practice test and labelling every lost mark with one of the three takes an hour and does more than the next practice test would.
The error log
One line each: the question, what went wrong, what to do instead. After a few tests the repeated lines name the real weaknesses.
Those weaknesses are usually not the ones that would have been guessed, and that is exactly why plateaus form: the wrong target is being studied.
The effect of the adaptive format
In the digital SAT, performance in the first module determines the difficulty of the second. Time lost in the first module lowers the ceiling of the second.
So finishing the first module cleanly is worth more than getting stuck on a hard question.
How much a score can rise
That depends on the starting point and the time remaining; a general number would mislead. What is measurable is whether the error classes are narrowing and whether the same mistakes recur.