Hello Ashley,

If you get an easy question during the test day and if you answer it incorrectly, then you'll be penalized heavily. This will definitely bring your scores down. An easy question MUST be answered correctly. When you answer an easy question correctly, you'll start to face difficult questions. If you answer it incorrectly you won't be penalized heavily. Since difficult questions carries more points than the easier ones, when you answer it correctly you scores will automatically increase.

I came to know about this through a post in our BTG forum. Hope it helps.

By the time you sit down to write the GMAT, you would have taken plenty of tests, and answered plenty of questions in a timed environment (hopefully ) .. My advise to you would be to set yourself up nicely for the entire section, and try to build a rhythm. I like to start slow even with the easy questions and it takes me a bit of time (3-4 questions usually) to build a nice rhythm and once i do get it i usually speed up automatically/subconsciously even though the questions get tougher (relative to the early ones). This is what works for me, but it need not be the best thing for you. Try to gauge a useful strategy when practicing in a timed environment..I bet some folks can go bang bang from the first question, if you are one of those then by all means try to breeze past the early questions which should be much easier if you are a 40+ scorer.

Try to analyze your quant and verbal by breaking it into topics...In quant for example i take approximately twice as much time in geometry (particularly CG) as compared to Number properties...at the end of the day, there should be some questions that you should be able to answer in well under 2 minutes and others where you are going to go over.