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What Excel Prep course do you recommend?

bestcourse courses Excel
New answer on Apr 04, 2021
5 Answers
1.5 k Views
Anonymous A asked on Mar 31, 2021

I am beginning an internship in consulting and wanted to take a course in excel beforehand to prepare. I have heard that Train the Streets is great, but I was looking for something more economical. I spotted some courses on Udemy, but don't know which to pick. Do you have any specific courses you could recommend?

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Best answer
Adi
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Mar 31, 2021
Accenture, Deloitte | Precision Case Prep | Experienced Interviewer & Career Coach | 15 years professional experience
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Denis
Expert
replied on Apr 01, 2021
Goldman Sachs Investment Banker NYC | Ex-Bain 5 yrs| MBA Chicago Booth | Passed > 13 MBB > 20 IB interviews

I liked Wall Street Prep, Break Into Wall Street, Udemy, Coursera. There are a lot of good ones - make sure not to overdo Excel since it would be more beneficial for you to be proficient in

MS Outlook including EFFICIENT use of calendar - look on Youtube for Outlook pro usersMS One Note - forget paper based Todo lists - that is the way to go

You would not believe how many people have messy calendars, cannot send proper meeting invites, dont know how to properly sort inbox and have no proper folder structure. This is the tool that will be open 24/7 on your laptop and the piece of software you use the most.


MS PPT - make sure you are proficient with how to use PPT in its basic form although all firms have special customized software within PPT so save you time

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Antonello
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Content Creator
replied on Mar 31, 2021
McKinsey | NASA | top 10 FT MBA professor for consulting interviews | 6+ years of coaching

Hi, I appreciate Udemy and Coursera's proposals.

Best,
Antonello

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Clara
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Apr 04, 2021
McKinsey | Awarded professor at Master in Management @ IE | MBA at MIT |+180 students coached | Integrated FIT Guide aut

Hello!

Congrats of that offer!

If there is one thing I wish I had done before joining McKinsey, that would have been Excel. So great that you are thinking about this now, since it can really be a game changer, so I would really focus on that (more than pptx, industry knowledge, etc., that are nice-to-have, but not deal breakers).

Train the Street is great, but get any that makes you familiar with:

Basic operations: SUM, SUMPRODUCT

Text transformations: CONCATENATE, LEFT, RIGHT, & operator,

Connecting different datasets: VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX(MATCH(),MATCH())

Conditional-based operations: SUMIF, COUNTIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, COUNTA

Learn how to analyze data using Pivot Tables

There are plenty of online materials:

Microsoft Support: https://support.office.com/en-us/excel

Kubicle: https://kubicle.com/personal (go for the 7 days free trial - Excel for Business Analytics)

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

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Ian
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Apr 01, 2021
#1 BCG coach | MBB | Tier 2 | Digital, Tech, Platinion | 100% personal success rate (8/8) | 95% candidate success rate

Hi there,

This is great that you're preparing for this role ahead of time! Just remember, you do not need to be an absolutel whiz before you start. Most courses will do the trick, so just pick whichever one seems to suit your learning style best.

Here are a few to start you off:

A few good resources:

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/learn-excel-resources

https://www.udemy.com/share/101Wde/ (Udemy is excellent. $15...basically free)

Important Tip: Don't just learn formulas etc. Test yourself! Download a free data set, ask yourself a question, and try to solve for it. Play with actual data solving real questions and building a real dashboard etc. Don't just passively take lessons :)

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Adi gave the best answer

Adi

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Accenture, Deloitte | Precision Case Prep | Experienced Interviewer & Career Coach | 15 years professional experience
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