Location of Countries MCQs | PDF Free Download
These Location of Countries MCQs cover borders, straits, mountain ranges and hemispheres, a physical geography topic that comes up in general knowledge papers for CSS, PPSC, FPSC and NTS almost every year. Test yourself below, then read on for the reasoning behind each answer.
1. Which country is both in Europe and Asia?
2. The Strait of Gibraltar separates which two regions?
3. Which country is landlocked in South America?
4. Which country is located entirely within the Southern Hemisphere?
5. The Himalayas separate which two countries?
6. Which African country is located closest to Europe?
7. Which country shares borders with the most nations (14)?
8. The Maldives is located in which ocean?
9. Which country is NOT part of Scandinavia?
10. The Dead Sea borders which two countries?
11. Which country is the smallest by land area?
12. The Andes Mountains run through which continent?
13. Which country is located on the Iberian Peninsula?
14. The Great Rift Valley is primarily located in:
15. Which country is geographically part of both Asia and Africa?
16. The Arctic Circle passes through which country?
17. Which two countries share the longest international border?
18. The "Horn of Africa" includes which country?
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Why location questions are a general knowledge staple
Physical geography rarely changes. A mountain range stays where it is, a strait keeps separating the same two coastlines, and a country’s hemisphere isn’t up for debate. That stability is exactly why location questions turn up so often in CSS, PPSC and FPSC papers: the facts don’t go stale the way current affairs questions do, so the same well established set of questions can be reused, reworded and recombined year after year.
The catch is that “location” covers more ground than most students expect. It isn’t only about naming a country’s continent. It stretches into transcontinental countries that sit in two regions at once, mountain ranges that double as international borders, bodies of water that separate specific pairs of countries, and a handful of genuinely close calls where two answers both have a real claim to being correct. The eighteen questions above sample all of those angles on purpose, rather than sticking to the easiest, most obvious “which continent is this country on” format.
General knowledge is rarely the only paper on these exams, and English usage sections tend to sit right alongside it. If you’re also brushing up on that side of your preparation, this English vocabulary video series and this guide to narration change rules cover two other topics that show up just as regularly.
Where this topic sits across CSS, PPSC, FPSC and NTS
Location questions fall under the same general knowledge umbrella as distinctive place names and flag symbolism, so the same testing bodies that ask about one tend to ask about all three.
CSS, run by the Federal Public Service Commission, treats general knowledge as a compulsory paper, and physical geography is a regular part of it. PPSC and the other provincial commissions, including Sindh’s SPSC, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s KPPSC and Balochistan’s BPSC, draw on a similar pool of standard location facts. FPSC leans on the same list for federal posts outside the CSS track. NTS, which handles testing for a wide range of public and semi-public organisations, treats location questions the same way it treats distinctive names and flags: a stable, well documented topic that’s easy to draw fresh questions from without much research.
A student who works through a solid set of location MCQs once tends to see that effort carry over across several of these exams rather than just one, which is part of why the topic rewards doing properly rather than skimming through once and moving on to the next topic on the list.
How examiners like to twist location questions
Two patterns come up often enough in this topic to be worth naming directly.
The first is the near-tie, where two options are both genuinely defensible and the question still expects one answer. China and Russia each border exactly 14 other countries, which makes “which country borders the most nations” a question with two correct answers in the real world, even though a multiple choice paper will only accept one. The Arctic Circle causes a quieter version of the same problem: it passes through Canada’s northern territories just as surely as it passes through Alaska, but exam papers usually test Alaska specifically. Knowing that these near-ties exist matters as much as knowing the expected answer, since it stops a correct instinct from reading as a wrong one.
The second is the transcontinental trap. Turkey, Egypt and Russia all straddle two continents, but each one does it differently, and questions rely on that difference. Turkey splits fairly evenly between Europe and Asia. Egypt is overwhelmingly African, with only the Sinai Peninsula sitting in Asia. Russia is overwhelmingly Asian by land area, despite its political and cultural centre of gravity sitting in Europe. A question asking generally “which country spans two continents” can have more than one honest answer, so the wording usually narrows it down to a specific detail, like which two continents exactly, or which peninsula is involved.
Quick reference table for the most tested locations
The table below pulls together some of the location facts that turn up most often across CSS, PPSC and FPSC papers, as a quick refresher before or after the quiz.
| Feature | Location | Worth remembering |
|---|---|---|
| Strait of Gibraltar | Spain to Morocco | Separates Europe from Africa at its narrowest point |
| Himalayas | India to China | Natural barrier along the Tibetan Plateau |
| Dead Sea | Jordan and Israel | Sits in the Jordan Rift Valley |
| Andes | South America | Runs the length of the continent’s western edge |
| Iberian Peninsula | Spain and Portugal | Also includes Andorra and Gibraltar |
| Great Rift Valley | East Africa | Runs from Ethiopia down to Mozambique |
| Sinai Peninsula | Egypt, in Asia | The only part of Egypt outside Africa |
| Vatican City | Inside Rome | Smallest country in the world by land area |
| Canada to USA border | North America | Longest international border in the world |
| Horn of Africa | Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti | Somalia occupies most of the peninsula itself |
What these 18 questions are really testing
Sort the quiz above by the kind of geography fact each question leans on, and a handful of categories cover the whole set.
How the 18 questions above group by the kind of geography fact each one leans on.
Borders and straits make up the largest share, which tracks with how often these papers ask what separates or connects two specific places rather than asking for a bare location on its own. Records and extremes, the smallest-country and longest-border style questions, show up almost as often as mountain ranges do, which is worth knowing since those two categories are easy to prepare for directly: there’s only one smallest country and one longest border, so once you know them, that category is effectively finished for good.
Five ways to keep locations straight
Physical geography rewards a different kind of memorising than symbolism or nicknames do, since most of it can be pinned to a mental map. These five habits make that easier.
- Anchor every fact to a neighbour rather than a bare location. “Bolivia is landlocked” is weaker than “Bolivia is landlocked, between Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay,” since the second version gives you five extra hooks to recall it by.
- Learn the three transcontinental countries as a set: Turkey, Egypt and Russia. Once you know how each one splits, the “which continents” style question stops being a guess.
- Treat near-ties as a category of their own rather than a single fact. China and Russia’s shared 14 borders, or Alaska and Canada both touching the Arctic Circle, are worth remembering as “both technically correct” rather than picking one and forgetting the other exists.
- When a question names two countries and asks what separates or connects them, picture the map first. A strait, a mountain range and a sea all do different jobs, and mixing them up is an easy, avoidable error.
- Spread the eighteen questions across two short sessions instead of one long one. A location you half remember today is usually solid by the second pass.
“A border is never just a line on a map. It’s the answer to a question someone eventually thought to ask.”
Pro tip: when a question has two options that both sound defensible, check whether the exam is testing the general fact or one specific detail. “Which countries share the Himalayas” has one clean answer, India and China, but “which country has the most land neighbours” genuinely has two, so the wording is doing more work than it looks like.
Four ideas worth knowing by name
A few geography terms turn up often enough in location questions that they’re worth knowing as concepts, separate from any single country.
A hemisphere is simply one half of the globe, split either by the equator into north and south, or by the prime meridian into east and west. Landlocked means a country has no coastline at all, which usually also means it depends on its neighbours for sea access. A strait is a narrow stretch of water connecting two larger seas or oceans, often doubling as the shortest line between two continents, the way the Strait of Gibraltar does. Transcontinental describes a single country whose territory crosses into more than one continent, whether that’s a near-even split like Turkey’s or a small peninsula like Egypt’s Sinai. Knowing these four terms cold makes the wording of a question easier to parse, even before you get to the specific country being asked about.
The lines that decide hemisphere questions
Hemisphere questions like the one in the quiz above hinge on a small number of invisible lines, and knowing roughly where they run answers most of them without any extra memorising.
The equator splits the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres at zero degrees latitude. It crosses parts of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, but very few countries sit exactly on it. Most nations fall clearly to one side or the other, which is exactly why “entirely in the Southern Hemisphere” has one clean answer rather than a contested one. The prime meridian does the same job for East and West, running through Greenwich in London and down through parts of West Africa. The Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn mark the northern and southern limits of the sun’s direct overhead position across the year, and they’re the lines a question is usually pointing to when it’s really about climate zones rather than hemispheres as such.
None of these lines move, which is part of why they make such dependable exam material. A country’s hemisphere is one of the few geography facts that will never need updating, unlike a border or a capital city.
A few locations that trip almost everyone up
A handful of facts in this list catch out students who otherwise know their geography well, usually because two answers both have a real claim.
China and Russia cause the most confusion of the bunch. Both share land borders with exactly 14 other countries, a genuine tie at the top of the list. Exam papers built around this fact usually expect China, but the honest answer is that either one has a defensible claim, and disputed regions can push Russia’s count even higher depending on how they’re counted.
Scandinavia and the Nordic countries cause a quieter mix-up. Norway, Sweden and Denmark share closely related languages and form the historical core of Scandinavia. Finland, despite sitting right next door and sharing plenty of culture and geography with its neighbours, speaks a language from a completely different family, which is why geography papers usually class it as Nordic rather than Scandinavian, even though the distinction feels academic when you’re just looking at a map. Iceland runs into the same issue from a different angle: linguistically it belongs with the Scandinavian group, but geographically it sits well off to the side, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes “which country is NOT part of X” questions harder than they first look.
The Arctic Circle rounds out the list. It’s easy to assume only one country in a set of options is correct, but Alaska and Canada’s northern territories both sit on the circle, just like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Greenland and a sliver of Iceland do. None of these are hard once you know the specific detail an exam is leaning on. They’re hard exactly once, the first time, which is the best argument for working through the full quiz above rather than trusting a first instinct.
Conclusion
Location of countries will keep showing up in Pakistani general knowledge papers because physical geography barely changes, which makes it one of the most reliable topics to prepare thoroughly rather than cram. The eighteen MCQs above cover the borders, mountain ranges, straits and records that come up most often across CSS, PPSC, FPSC and NTS papers, along with the reasoning behind each one and an answer key you can download as a PDF.
Treat the quiz as a diagnostic before anything else. Run through all eighteen once to see which categories, borders, mountains, records or hemispheres, give you the most trouble, then spend a second pass on those specifically rather than starting over from question one. Revisit the quiz a couple of times over the coming week rather than once tonight, and the locations that feel unfamiliar now should feel routine by exam day.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about the location of countries.
Related Resources
For more competitive exam preparation, check out our PPSC exam guide. Also explore our English Vocabulary Videos to boost your language skills for exams.