Hi there,

One month may or may not be enough. It depends on the following:

• Your current level
• How much time you have to dedicate per day
• How you will use the time

I would recommend the following steps to prepare:

1. Define a calendar for your preparation. Identify how many hours you have available before your interview and allocate a time slot for preparation in your calendar for each day, working on the points below. Many people need 100+ hours to be ready before a consulting interview so you can keep that as a benchmark
2. Read Case In Point or Case Interview Secrets for a general understanding of what a consulting interview is. Don’t focus on the structures proposed in the books though, as they are not good enough nowadays.
3. Start reading good MBA Consulting Handbooks – you can find several for free online (Insead is a good one to start). Read the cases and try to apply your structure to solve them. Whenever you see there is something missing, upgrade your structure with the new insides. Try to read at least a new case per day – in this way you will absorb better the information with constant learning.
4. After the first 5-10 cases in books/handbooks and basic theory, start to practice live. PrepLounge can be helpful to connect with other candidates for that. There is a relevant part of the interview score that is based on your communication, which you cannot practice at all if you read cases only. Keep track of your mistakes and see if you repeat them. If so, try to identify the source of the mistake (feedback of experienced partners would be particularly useful for this). Be sure to focus on both the behavioural part and the case part. The case part should also cover market sizing, mental math and graph analysis.
5. Once you feel you are not improving anymore, if you have a tight time constraint or if you want a realistic assessment of your level, consider using support from experts to strengthen your performance
6. Before the interviews, be sure to prepare your questions for the interviewer –great way to show you prepared in advance and to connect with the interviewer for a good final impression.

If you want to spend few hours only instead of 100+ and cover everything mentioned above, I developed a program to precisely do that. You can click at the following link to find more:

https://u.preplounge.com/63phuq

After this program, you will know exactly what to expect in your interview, what to work on, and how to focus on the real differentiator to land a top consulting offer.

Please feel free to PM me if you need more information.

Best,

Francesco

Hi there,

It's tight, but I recommend the following:

1) An initial planning session with a coach: 1 hour with a coach now will have a productivity multiplier effect on all your efforts moving forward. They will figure out what materials are best for you, guide you towards the best ways to learn, and come up with a preparation plan with you.

2) Leverage free resources first: PrepLounge Q&A and case library, Poets and Quants, SpencerTom, Google, etc.). Leverage these options, read-up, and build that casingknowledge

Importantly, read The Economist, the Financial Times, McKinsey Insights, and BCG Insights daily to build up your business knowledge.

3) Case with other PrepLoungers: Casing with other PrepLoungers is free. Not only do you get to practice casing, but you get direct feedback. Additionally, you learn a lot just from casing others. Finally, from other PrepLoungers you'll learn which materials/coaches are helpful.

Dear A,

In my time I have practiced around 150 cases. So the more the better.

In order to use this time in a more efficient way, I would recommend you to less practice by yourself, and more practice with peers or an experienced coach to get structured feedback.

if you need any further help or advice, feel free to reach out.

Best,

André

Hi Anonymous,

I am sorry but nobody can seriously answer for you if 1 month is enough - it's depending on so many variables which only you know in detail (current performance level, slope of your learning curve, business background and insights, ...).

How to best prepare, there are lots of threads already - maybe reasonable to check them first and come back with more specific questions afterwards.

Since you address McKinsey, also don't forget to prepare for your McKinsey PEI (Personal Experience Interview). It's the most underestimated part of the McKinsey recruiting process - both in terms of time required and complexity to get it right. PrepLounge recently published a specific guide on that. It's essentially an excerpt from my Ultimate McKinsey PEI Prep ebook, which you can find directly here on PrepLounge: https://www.preplounge.com/en/shop/tests-2/the-secret-mckinsey-pei-cheat-sheet-42.

Hope that helps - if so, please be so kind to give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!

Robert

Hi, 1 month if you can be fully dedicated to it is more than enough. Feel free to text me for additional tips on how to set up a preparation plan

Best,
Antonello

Yes, one month should be enough. even if you have a regular job. You have done ~30 cases before, so you know the basics. You should focus on honing your skills in a few sessions with an experienced interviewer and work on their feedback very strategically. Don't spend a lot of time preparing with inexperienced interviewers, as they will not be able to give you the detailed and practical feedback you need at this point.

Judging by all of what you said, a month should be enough. What matters more is how you use the month to prepare and whether you are able to leverage all resources available to you in order to become a stronger candidate.

Hello,

Yes, it could be enough if you have already studied for business cases before. In order to prepare for case interview, I suggest the following approach:

• Read the Case in Point (Cosentino) in order to get a first approach with the Case interviews
• When you have read most of it, start doing cases on yourself practicing with frameworks, math and structure of the interview.
• Practice with other people (candidates/coaches)
• Read some chapters of the Case Interview Secrets
• Listen to the recordings of the LOMS program

While you are practicing for your cases, you have to consider also some time to prepare your Fit Interview that is a fundamental part of the process. Consider that you will need at least 40/50 cases made with other people.

Feel free to contact me if you want to have some help to stucture your workplan.

Best,

Luca