A 60-Day Study Plan for PPSC General Ability Tests

PPSC recruitment tests for posts such as Assistant (BS-16) and Junior Clerk (BS-11) often use a General Ability paper: 100 MCQs in 90 minutes, drawn from General Knowledge, Pakistan Studies, Current Affairs, Islamic Studies, Geography, Mathematics, English, Urdu, Everyday Science and Computer.

Sixty days is enough time to prepare properly, provided you are consistent. This plan assumes about two hours on weekdays and three to four hours on weekends, which is realistic for people who also work or study.

The principles behind the plan

Before the schedule, three rules that make the difference:

1. Little and often beats long and rare. Two focused hours every day will outperform a ten-hour Sunday followed by nothing.
2. Test yourself, don’t just reread. Answering questions forces your memory to retrieve information, which is what the exam demands. Rereading notes feels productive but builds far less recall.
3. Revisit old material on a schedule. Facts you studied in week one will fade by week four unless you deliberately revise them.

Weeks 1–2: Build the base

Goal: cover every subject once, lightly, and find your weak spots.

• Day 1: Take a full model paper cold. Note your score per subject. This is your baseline, not a judgement.
• Daily routine (weekdays):
  • 40 minutes: one Pakistan Studies or Islamic Studies topic
  • 30 minutes: one General Knowledge topic
  • 30 minutes: English vocabulary (synonyms, antonyms, idioms)
  • 20 minutes: Mathematics practice
• Weekends: Everyday Science, Computer and Urdu topics, plus 30 minutes of current affairs reading.

At the end of week two, retake a mixed quiz on everything you covered. Anything you got wrong goes onto your “mistakes list”. On this site, your Saved page keeps it for you automatically.

Weeks 3–5: Go deeper and start timing yourself

Goal: depth in high-yield subjects and speed under time pressure.

• Spend more time on your two weakest subjects from the baseline test.
• Start doing timed sets of 25 questions in 22 minutes. This mirrors the real exam’s pace of about 54 seconds per question.
• Every Sunday, revise your mistakes list from the previous weeks before starting anything new.

Useful targets for this phase:

• Pakistan Studies: Pakistan Movement, constitutional history, geography of Pakistan, national symbols
• General Knowledge: international organizations, capitals and currencies, inventions and discoveries
• Mathematics: percentages, ratios, averages, simple interest. Learn the method once, then practise until it is automatic.

Weeks 6–7: Full mock tests

Goal: build stamina and exam technique.

• Take two full 100-question mock tests per week under real conditions: one sitting, 90 minutes, no phone, no pausing.
• After each test, spend at least as long reviewing as you spent answering. For every wrong answer, ask: did I not know it, did I misread it, or did I run out of time? Each cause has a different fix.
• Keep current affairs going with 20–30 minutes of daily reading.

Week 8: Consolidate, don’t cram

Goal: arrive at the exam calm and sharp.

• No new topics in the last five days. Revise your mistakes list and your own short notes.
• Take one last mock test three or four days before the exam, not the night before.
• Sleep normally. A tired brain loses more marks to careless errors than a day of extra revision can gain.

What to do if you fall behind

Life happens. If you lose a few days:

• Do not try to “catch up” by doubling your hours. Simply continue the plan from where you are.
• Cut breadth before depth: it is better to know 80% of the syllabus well than 100% vaguely.
• Protect the full mock tests in weeks six and seven. They matter more than any single topic.

A note on resources

Use a small number of reliable sources and stick with them. Jumping between many books and websites wastes time, and different sources sometimes disagree on facts. When you are unsure about an answer, check it against an official or reference source rather than taking the most common answer online.

Start today with the baseline test. Sixty days from now, you will be glad you began with an honest picture of where you stand.