Hi,

congratulation for being approached by McKinsey, first of all!
Personally, I think that it really depends on your aspirations. It seems pretty clear to me that you want to be a generalist, so I definitely discourage you to pursue the research path, if possible.

I worked for more than 3 years for McKinsey, and I can tell you that:

• if you are a performing researcher, you would definitely have the option to transition to the generalist (aka integrative) path;
• ​from research analyst to business analyst, the recruiting process won't change much: the business case is still the main part of it.

However, 10 days are not enough to get prepared, if you have not done any preparation yet. You definitely need to run multiple expert sessions, but this would not make it 100% sure to nail the interviews.

My suggestion is the following:

1. Try to understand with the HR if they may be interested in your profile as a generalist consultant (worst case you go on with the researcher path and then you transition later);
2. Communicate to the HR that due to personal problems you won't be able to interview earlier than 1 month (at least);
3. Reach out to an expert (as I am) to work out the best preparation scheduling, according to your current level.

Best of luck!