McKinsey Case Prep - Questions

Question

Dear preplounge community,

I have a few questions for the McKinsey Case Preparation:

Should you state a hypothesis at the beginning of the case, even though you have not much information at the beginning of the case? When is it best to do that, in the book Case in Point the author states that you should state the hypothesis within the first 5 minutes, but often it is not possible because you have not enough data. How to analyze in which branch you should start to state your hypothesis after doing the issue tree?
How can you best prepare for different types of questions and what are the most common ones? Is there like a template for each type of case?

Thanks very much in advance!

Answer 1

Hi,

Starting from you first question: stating a hypothesis is not about throwing the dice, so at the very beginning of the case it does not make much sense because you simply do not know enough yet.

A good hypothesis should usually be built either on:

previous experience (e.g. you already worked on a similar problem or know the industry very well), or
early evidence emerging during the case.

So I would avoid forcing a hypothesis before starting the analysis phase, unless you have strong prior knowledge that allows you to make an informed assumption.

A lot of candidates misunderstand what interviewers are looking for here. The goal is not to randomly guess the answer early; the goal is to show that you can progressively form and refine a point of view as evidence emerges.

Regarding frameworks, there are definitely different frameworks for different types of cases, but there are two important things to keep in mind:

You will never be able to memorize a framework for every possible case.
At some point, you need to become comfortable building structures from scratch.
Pre-packaged frameworks can backfire badly if used blindly.
If you try to force-fit a memorized framework into a case, it often becomes obvious to the interviewer that you are just copy-pasting something you learned mechanically.

What I usually recommend is:

become familiar with the most common frameworks and business concepts;
understand the logic behind them;
then use your brain to adapt them to the specific situation.

That means sometimes removing buckets that are not relevant, sometimes adding completely new branches depending on the context.

Hope it helps and feel free to DM me if anything is not clear,
Best,
Franco