General Knowledge - Current Affairs, Geography and Basic Science
General Knowledge here is a breadth paper: international organisations and their headquarters, capitals and currencies, world geography superlatives, major scientific facts, and current affairs from roughly the year preceding the advertisement. Because the current-affairs half is time-sensitive, verify dates against the last six months before the exam rather than relying on an old guide.
Stable facts that recur
- UN: founded 1945, headquarters New York, 193 member states; Security Council has 5 permanent members.
- OIC: headquarters Jeddah. SAARC: 1985, headquarters Kathmandu. IMF and World Bank: Washington, D.C. WHO: Geneva. UNESCO: Paris.
- Geography: longest river Nile; largest ocean Pacific; largest hot desert Sahara; largest country by area Russia; highest waterfall Angel Falls.
- Pakistan's neighbours: China, India, Iran, Afghanistan (and the Arabian Sea to the south).
Worked example
"The headquarters of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is in:" Reasoning: the OIC was founded in 1969 at Rabat but its permanent secretariat sits in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Rabat is the founding venue, not the headquarters - a deliberately planted distractor.
How to handle current affairs
For each major story, memorise four anchors: who holds the office, the country/city, the date, and what changed. A question usually tests one of these four, not the full narrative.
Traps
- Founding city versus headquarters city (OIC, UN, SAARC).
- Confusing largest by area (Russia) with largest by population.
- Mixing Currencies: Japan–yen, Saudi Arabia–riyal, Turkey–lira, Iran–rial.
- Answering current-affairs items from memory of a previous year's post - officeholders change.