Cracking The GK Section Of The IIFT Entrance Exam

	2015	2016	2017
No of GK Questions	28	25	18
Total No of Questions	124	123	114
Percentage of GK Questions	22.6%	20.3%	15.8%

 

The number of GK questions has been falling over the past few years. Not only this, the percentage of GK questions has been falling steadily as well. 

	2015	2016	2017
GK Marks	14	12.5	9
Total Marks	124	100	100
Percentage of GK Marks	11.3%	12.5%	9.0%

 

Taking a look at the marks, you can see that the relative weightage of the GK section has fallen over the past three years as well.

Most Important Topics in the GK Section

I have made an attempt to try and categorize the different GK topics and the frequency in which they’ve appeared over the past three years.

The topics (in decreasing order of frequency) are:

1. International Trade, bodies like UN and its policies: Look up the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, their various arms and the locations of their headquarters; trade policies and agreements like TPP, NAFTA; Sustainable Development Goals; Brexit, etc.
2. Government of India and its initiatives; bodies like RBI, SEBI: Read up on various government schemes and initiatives like Jan Dhan Yojana; news involving PSUs; the activities, history and top executives of bodies like RBI, NITI Aayog and SEBI.
3. Miscellaneous
4. Finance: Names of stock exchanges and indices of various countries (Nifty, Sensex, NASDAQ, etc.); topics like Bitcoin, etc.
5. Indian Companies – their history, products, taglines, logos, founders, executives and advertising campaigns.
6. International Companies – their history, products, taglines, logos, founders, executives and advertising campaigns.
7. Geography – Look up countries and their neighbours, capital cities, currencies as well as acronyms like MIST, BRICS, G8.
8. Science
9. Sports – Read up on the Olympics, FIFA World Cups as well as Indian sportspersons in the news such as Hima Das.
10. Movies – Read up on Oscar and National Award winning movies, their directors, producers and cast.
11. Literature – Read up on classic books and their authors;  recent winners of the Nobel Prize and Man Booker Prize.

Sources of News & Information

Apps like Inshorts & Knappily can help to stay abreast of current affairs around the world by reading snippets.

For in-depth reading, read The Mint, The Hindu or the Economist.

The views in this post are those of the author, expressed in a personal capacity, and should be treated as such.