My view: it creates an inaccurate illusion and wrong expectation about what is actually tested in MBB interviews. 

An “Analytics Academy” is simply NOT what will make you successful in these interviews. But it is very typical for the kind of advice people get when asking former Consulting Juniors for help. The BIG damage I see with my mentees who went through such drill compilations is that they spent an enormously disproportionate amount of time on something that will only make up 5-10% of their success in the MBB interview process. Especially for MBB interviews, it is simply IMPOSSIBLE to learn “analytics” in a way that is detached from full case contexts. 

Because guess what: it is about the INSIGHTS, not the technical calculations (which are pretty easy in MBB interviews!). And insights NEVER reside in the data! Insights always come from CONTEXTUALIZING the data against the principle logic you set up for the question asked by the client. This is one of the major reasons why candidates are struggling in the real interviews - because all the drills they went through have not prepared them for a thorough and insighful discussion of the problem at hand. Instead they do all sorts of meaningless percentage analyses which are completely random and just show a complete lack of focused thinking.

Cheers, Sidi

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Dr. Sidi Koné 

(Former Senior Engagement Manager and Interviewer at McKinsey | Former Senior Consultant and Interviewer at BCG)