How important is General Awareness in IIFT 2014: Know what and how to prepare

Updated on August 8, 2014

General Awareness is one of the important sections in IIFT entrance which contains questions in a range of 25-30

It's not only conventional pattern of GK but also analytical and current environmental awareness of your surroundings which is needed to crack GK in IIFT 2014

IIFT will conduct the entrance test for its Delhi and Kolkata campuses in 20 cities across India. The conventional paper pencil mode test will be of two hours duration from 10.00 A.M. to 12.00 Noon to be held on Sunday, November 23, 2014.

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), is a highly ranked B school with an intake of 220 seats to its most sought after 2 years MBA programme in International Business. This programme is available at IIFT New Delhi and Kolkata campuses in India and at Dar-es-Salaam campus in Tanzania.

Exam components

The written admission test to MBA Programme in IIFT consists of multiple choice objective type questions (in English). IIFT entrance comprises the questions covering English Comprehension, General Knowledge & Awareness, Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Analysis.

There are no fixed number of questions in IIFT entance test, their number may go anywhere in the range of 115 to 130.

How important is General Knowledge & Awareness (GK)

The important component out of the above 4 sections is named by IIFT as ‘General Knowledge & Awareness’. Prof S K Agarwal, expert on Verbal Ability and IIFT preparation shares that it’s not only conventional pattern of GK but also analytical and current environmental awareness of your surroundings which is needed to crack GK in IIFT 2014.

General Awareness is one of the important sections in IIFT entrance which contains questions in a range of 25-30. In IIFT 2013 the weightage to this section in the test was 14% and a sectional cut off was also needed. The same pattern will be applicable for IIFT 2014.

General Awareness will play the same role in pushing up your merit position in IIFT as other sections can do.

Components of General Knowledge and Awareness

Important components of General Awareness in IIFT entrance 2014 would be as follows-

A. Conventional

B. Business, Finance & Economy based

C. Current Affairs India (Political, Social, Sports, Films, awards etc.)

D. International ( personalities-past & Present, global events etc.)

Each part needs due weightage. Conventional GK is available in books; Current GK is based on current reading of newspapers and periodicals; Business & Economics GK reflect the changes in Fiscal and monetary policy, CRR, Repo Rate, Devaluation and up valuation of Rupee.

Please remember current GK-whether Business, national and international has an on-going preparation method and thorough reading of the newspaper only can keep you updated.

How to prepare

Have clarity

There may be certain confusing names, events and the aspirants tend to forget the exact description which means you may not be so good to manage the future affairs with this weakness. So have clarity and understand the difference, for example difference among the abbreviations like G-8, D-8, G-15, G-20, NATO, OAS, OPEC, OAPEC, OECD, OIC, APEC, ADB, ASEAN, EEC, EU, EFTA, SAARC, WCC, WTO, should be well understood and remembered in context so that you may not forget the same in the testing room.

Know what to study

All the Candidates, in one or the other way, are enriching their General Knowledge on the topics they like and are inclined to. The need is to understand the basics “How and what to prepare to improve the General Awareness”.

In fact, study of any subject is not so vast as the study of General Knowledge or as you put it General Awareness. But on the other hand, the best part on preparation for this section is that you do not need any special skill set as required for Quant and Verbal. What you need is your inclination and interest in regular reading of books and periodicals.

1.Conventional –Good books on GK are available in the market and may be considered the best to prepare in a short time like Manorama Year Book, General Knowledge refresher, General Knowledge by S. Chand & Co. and so on. Devote a few minutes every day and try to learn this type of GK as much as possible. You may even mug it up-if you can but better way will be to relate one event to the personality, it will help you to prepare more than one question in a single reading. You may have questions based on the topics like Authors of the books, Historical facts & events, Personalities, places, questions based on inventions, discoveries and Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Biology etc

2. Business, Finance & Economy –This is one of the most favourite sections of GK that appear in the CMAT entrance examinations. Business and finance oriented General Knowledge improves your understanding of economic environment, strengthening your IQ and making you better equipped to face the Group discussions and Personal Interviews. Try to cover hot topics in Business, Finance and Economy. Going through them will help you to prepare better for your forthcoming IIFT examination. Following tips will be a great help to you-

Important tips to cover Business & Economy

Please read whatever stuff is available on such topics as you may confront these questions in different manner like ‘ What is the current CRR’, ‘Difference between CRR & SLR’ ‘ Instruments for money control’, “The authority that can change the Bank Rate of the Country” , ‘Which is the petroleum product from which subsidy has been fully withdrawn’, ‘Budget speech of the President marks the beginning or the conclusion of budget session’ ‘ Where the budget is presented first in Loksabha or RajyaSabha’, ‘Which company is not included in the NAVRATNA companies of India’ and so on.

Regularly read the business, economy page of newspapers like The Times of India, The Economic Times periodicals like The week, India Today, The Economist – mark the striking events, read editorials and other articles analyzing various national and international events. Year books, purchased by you, will also be a good help in the preparation.

3. Current Affairs – India - Put more emphasis on last few years’ events in the country – Important changes, Events like Cricket World Cup, Victory at Lords after 28 years, Recent announcements by Government, Commonwealth games, creations of additional states, appointments – Private and Public sector, awards etc. Global happenings that mark their impacts in the country must be well read. Although there is no syllabus for GK, you must brush up whatever you have read. Draw a quick plan to revise and learn.

Regular reading of the national events in the newspapers like The Hindu and the above mentioned ones will be quite advantageous. You need to spend around 15 minutes a day to it and one event will link you to another. Read the associated events as they are also the probable questions.

4. International - Answers to Questions based on International affairs sometimes are difficult to distinguish due to the close similarity in names, cities, figures etc. So the important part is to find out some key word in the articles wherefrom you learn and prepare the GK.

Put more emphasis on last decade events and global happenings like global depression, mutiny in certain countries, economic swings that made impact on Indian Economy, Appointments – like the second term of Obama as the President of America- his core international policies that may impact our Country, All about Malaysian Planes who were Lost and Shot in one year, their names, air route, what happened.

Expert’s advice

In view of Prof S K Agarwal, if you read the stuff with interest you will surely remember it. You are still left with more than 3 months to IIFT 2014. You would prepare, revise and groom the General Awareness very well during this period, if you could attend and follow the below given preparation tips.

-The time for crawling preparation is over and the need is to shed the human nature of waking up at the eleventh hour.

-Three months are sufficient to prepare, revise, refresh well in this area. The tips to various areas of preparation are appended. You are required to meticulously follow the guided path and rest assured- if you do it, you will succeed.

Probable Questions

Following are a few indicative GK questions for IIFT 2014. Aspirants are advised to move on to prepare more and more questions on all the topics

1. Which of the following countries is not a member of SAARC?

2. Nepal

2. Myanmar

3. Pakistan

4. Afghanistan

2.Who amongst the following is not associated with Egypt?

1. Mohammed al – magariaf

2. Adly Mansour

3. Mohammed Morsi

4. Hosni Mubarak