Flashcards

Space = flip · [→] = skip · [←] / [U] = undo · [K] = got it (retires) · [D] = missed (requeues) · [H] = reveal hint. Each filter is a finite session — you're done when every card is mastered.

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Learn

Four modes: vocab MC drills terms and concepts. case math is timed single-problem applied math (sizing, breakeven, CAGR, margin). mental math is rapid-fire arithmetic — the raw speed you need so the math isn't what trips you up mid-case. brain teasers is market-sizing and Fermi estimation — build the reflex of structuring an answer from scratch.

Match — 6 pairs, timed

Click a term, then click its definition. Get all 6 pairs as fast as you can. Draws from vocab + formulas + concepts (excludes frameworks and cases).

time: 0.0s pairs: 0 / 6

Vocab — topic-by-topic

Filter by topic or search.

Frameworks — case-type → buckets

These are the bucket sets you'd draw on a whiteboard when given each case type. They're lists, not single-answer facts, so they live here instead of in the MC quiz. Tap to expand.

Cases — all 42 walkthroughs

Expanding a case shows only the prompt. Think through each block — clarifying questions, framework, math, brainstorm, recommendation — and click reveal when you're ready to see the book's answer. Mimics a real interview instead of dumping the answer key. reveal all / hide all toggle practice mode vs exam-review mode.

Formulas — case-math cheat sheet

Quick-glance reference. Each formula has a short note on when to reach for it. Memorize the income statement stack cold.

Examples — learn by worked walkthroughs

The missing layer between vocab and a live case. Each walkthrough shows you how to pick a framework, state assumptions, do the math, and sanity-check — not just what the right answer is. Read these cold before running full cases; the structure here is what the interviewer is grading you on.

Resources — how to use this deck

A prep timeline, a one-page cheat sheet, interview tips, and the casebooks this site was compiled from. Start with the timeline that matches how much runway you have.

Prep timeline — pick your runway

Undergrad / MBA consulting recruiting cycles: summer internships post first-round (Aug–Oct), full-time (Sep–Nov). Back out from your first interview date and pick the track.

  1. wk 1–3 · parallel
    Recruiter outreach
    Find the recruiter for your school at every target firm. On LinkedIn, pull each firm's University Relations / [your school] recruiting lead plus 2–3 alumni in the practice. Send a 4-line email or InMail: who you are, school + grad year, one sentence on why this firm (not any firm), one concrete ask — coffee chat, resume look, or a referral note. Start early — replies warm up over weeks, not days, and you want a named contact before applications open.
    15 min/day · 5–8 firms mapped · 3–5 warm threads
  2. wk 1–2
    Foundation
    Learn the vocabulary. Run 06 Vocab + 07 Formulas end to end. Do 01 Flashcards filtered to fundamentals + finance-and-math. No full cases yet — you need the language first.
    0 cases/day · 30 min/day · master ~60 terms
  3. wk 3–4
    Frameworks
    Learn the 5 canonical frameworks in 05 Frameworks: profitability, market entry, M&A, new product, pricing/growth. Do 2 warm-up cases from the fundamentals tag. Focus is structure, not speed.
    2 cases/week · 45 min/day
  4. wk 5–7
    Volume
    Cases, every day. Work through the Darden block (cases 1–15). Don't reveal the answer until you've written your framework + done the math cold. Use the 🧠 your turn panel inside each case. Review missed vocab in 02 Learn.
    1 case/day · 60–75 min · 15 cases total
  5. wk 8–9
    Live mocks
    Get a partner. Switch to Tuck block (16–27), then warm into the MBB block (28–51) — that's where the full 5-step opening + RRRN rep lives. Do half cold alone, half with a partner giving you the prompt out loud. Start using the voice mock feature. Behavioral prep starts here — STAR stories for Why consulting, lead through conflict, failure.
    1 case/day + 2 live mocks/week · 8 behavioral stories drafted
  6. wk 10–11
    Weak-spot drills
    Stop doing new cases cold. Drill what you miss. Practice pack (52–71) = targeted. Weak at market-sizing? Do 10 back to back. Weak at breakeven math? Same. Time every math block — you should hit ±5% of the answer in under 3 min.
    targeted drills · daily timed math · 3 mocks/week
  7. wk 12
    Taper
    Don't burn out. 1 mock every other day. Re-read your recommendations from wk 5 cases — rewrite them cleaner. Sleep. Print the cheat sheet below. Show up rested.
    2 mocks in week · 0 new material
  1. wk 1–2 · parallel
    Recruiter outreach
    Map the recruiter for your school at every target firm. LinkedIn → each firm's University Relations / [your school] lead plus 1–2 alumni in the practice. Send a 4-line email or InMail: who you are, school + grad year, one sentence on why this firm, one concrete ask. Less runway than the 12-week plan — fire these off in week 1 so replies land before mocks start.
    10 min/day · 4–6 firms mapped · 2–3 warm threads
  2. wk 1
    Vocab + frameworks
    Speedrun the language. 06 Vocab flashcards filtered to fundamentals, finance-and-math. Read all 5 frameworks in 05. Memorize the income-statement stack from 07 Formulas.
    0 cases · 60 min/day · 80 terms
  3. wk 2
    Walk-through mode
    Do 5 cases with the answer visible. Read prompt → try framework → peek → compare. Goal is pattern recognition, not performance. Cases 1–5 (Darden).
    1 case/day · reveal-as-you-go mode
  4. wk 3
    Cold solo
    Now do them blind. Cases 6–12 (Darden). Write framework + math before revealing. Time yourself — 35 min/case target.
    1 case/day · cold · 35 min target
  5. wk 4
    Live mocks
    Partner time. Switch to Tuck (16–22). 3 mocks with a partner, 3 solo. Start behavioral — draft 6 STAR stories.
    1 case/day · 3 live mocks · behavioral drafting
  6. wk 5
    Weak spots
    Drill your misses. Practice pack (52–71) as targeted reps. If your math is the problem, do 5 math blocks/day cold. If your structure is the problem, draw frameworks on a whiteboard until they're reflex.
    targeted · 2 mocks
  7. wk 6
    Taper
    Print the cheat sheet. 2 light mocks. Re-read your best cases. Sleep 8 hrs the night before.
    2 mocks · rest
  1. day 1
    Triage
    Read everything, solve nothing. All 5 frameworks. All formulas. Top ~40 vocab cards (filter: fundamentals + finance). You're building a mental index, not depth.
    3 hrs · 0 cases
  2. day 2–3
    Read-along cases
    6 cases, answer visible. Cases 1, 4, 8, 12 (Darden) + 2 Tuck. You're learning the shape — what clarifying Qs sound like, how the math rolls, how to land a rec.
    3 cases/day · walk-through mode
  3. day 4–6
    Cold solo
    6 cases blind, 1 per morning + 1 per evening. Pick across case types — 1 profitability, 1 market entry, 1 M&A, 1 sizing, 1 pricing, 1 ops.
    2 cases/day · cold
  4. day 7–10
    Live mocks
    At least 1 live mock per day. Beg a friend, use the voice-mock feature, post in a Slack group — just don't skip live reps. Draft 4 STAR stories.
    1 live + 1 solo / day
  5. day 11–13
    Fix the leaks
    One focused drill per day on your weakest block. Sizing / breakeven / growth-pricing / recommendation delivery. Print the cheat sheet.
    targeted · 1 mock
  6. day 14
    Game day
    Nothing new. Re-read the cheat sheet and your best STAR stories. Eat. Sleep. Walk in rested beats walk in cramming every time.
    0 cases

One-page cheat sheet

Print this. Tape it above your desk. Below is the web version; the button gives you a clean landscape PDF for printing.

MECE check (do this every time)
  • Mutually Exclusive — buckets don't overlap
  • Collectively Exhaustive — nothing important missing
  • 3–4 buckets ideal. 5 is a warning. 2 is lazy.
  • If two buckets could contain the same lever, collapse them.
Profitability
  • Profit = Revenue − Cost
  • Revenue: price × volume; segment by product / geo / customer
  • Cost: fixed vs variable; then COGS / SG&A / overhead
  • Industry shift vs firm-specific — always rule out the market before you dig into ops
Market entry
  • Market attractiveness — size, growth, margins, competition
  • Capability fit — can we win here? distinctive strength?
  • Economics — breakeven volume, time to breakeven
  • Mode of entry — build / buy / partner
M&A
  • Strategic rationale — why this, why now
  • Target — standalone value, growth, quality of earnings
  • Synergies — revenue (growth) and cost (consolidation)
  • Risks — integration, regulatory, culture, customer concentration
Math heuristics
  • US population ≈ 330M · US households ≈ 128M · avg household 2.6
  • Life expectancy 78 · working years ≈ 45
  • Workday 8h · workweek 40h · workyear ≈ 2,000 hrs
  • Breakeven volume = Fixed costs ÷ (price − variable cost)
  • CAGR ≈ (end/start)1/n − 1 · rule of 72: yrs to double ≈ 72 ÷ r%
Clarifying questions — opening script
  • "Let me make sure I have the key facts…" — restate
  • "I have three quick clarifying questions." — time horizon, client goals, key metric
  • "Can I take a minute to structure my thoughts?" — always yes
  • Ask for data once — don't fish for the answer
Recommendation delivery
  • 1. Recommendation — yes / no / which option, one sentence
  • 2. Reasons — 2–3 from your analysis (not the whole case)
  • 3. Risks — what could derail this
  • 4. Next steps — what you'd do in the next 30/60/90 days
  • Top-down, confident tone. No hedging.
Red flags (stop and reset)
  • You've been talking > 90 sec without a structure on paper
  • Math off by more than 10× — reset, re-read the numbers
  • You've asked 4+ clarifying Qs — the interviewer wants you solving
  • You used the word maybe in the recommendation

Tips & tricks

The stuff that separates a pass from a ding once you know the frameworks.

First 60 seconds
  1. Take the prompt. Write it down verbatim.
  2. Play back the prompt in your own words. ("So the client is X, their goal is Y, and we want to know Z.")
  3. Ask 2–3 clarifying Qs max. Then ask for a minute.
  4. Use the minute. Actually structure on paper. Don't wing it.
  5. Present your structure top-down: "I'd like to look at three areas: A, B, C. I'd start with A because…"
Behavioral — STAR
  1. Situation — 1 sentence setup
  2. Task — your specific role and what was at stake
  3. Action — what you did (not the team). 3–4 specific actions.
  4. Result — numbers if you have them, lesson if you don't
  5. Draft 6–8 stories. Cover: leadership, conflict, failure, analytical, impact, why consulting, why firm.
Common mistakes
  • Reciting a framework. Tailor it. "Profitability" with no industry context = instant ding.
  • Math without units. Always label. "$4.2M revenue" beats "4.2".
  • Ignoring the data. If they handed you an exhibit, it's load-bearing. Reference it in your rec.
  • Boiling the ocean in the brainstorm. 5–7 good ideas > 15 bad ones. Group them.
  • Soft recommendation. Pick a side. Interviewer respects a wrong-but-committed answer more than a hedge.
Day of
  • Pen + notepad + water, on the desk before start.
  • Close all tabs except the video call. One browser window.
  • Land your voice — stand up and say your name out loud 3×.
  • Smile on entry. Seriously. Changes tone.
  • If you freeze: "Let me take 30 seconds to reset." Then do.
  • Ask a sharp Q at the end. Not "what's the culture like." Something about the interviewer's recent project.

Sources & credits

The 71 cases in this deck were hand-compiled from four public sources. The original PDFs are linked below — they're worth reading for the full case context, exhibits, and interviewer guidance that didn't make it into the flashcards.

  • darden
    Darden Consulting Club Casebook
    University of Virginia · Darden School of Business · 15 cases (ids 1–15)
    Flagship MBA casebook. Strong coverage of profitability, M&A, and market-entry cases. Exhibits are the gold standard for case math practice.
  • tuck
    Tuck Consulting Club Casebook 2024
    Dartmouth · Tuck School of Business · 12 cases (ids 16–27)
    Heavier on operations and unusual industries (auto parts, luxury landscaping, hearing aids). Good for building out your rep of non-standard case types.
  • mbb
    MBB Casebook 2021 — Peter K.
    McKinsey · BCG · Bain · L.E.K. · Kearney · 24 cases (ids 28–51)
    24 cases inspired by the MBB recruiting cycle. Organized by weekly archetype — profitability, revenue growth, market entry, comparison. Emphasizes the 5-step opening protocol and RRRN recommendation close. Good for drilling the canonical interview flow.
  • practice
    Practice Pack — compiled drills
    Hand-built · 20 cases (ids 52–71)
    Supplemental cases focused on single-skill reps — market sizing, breakeven math, growth strategy, pricing. Shorter than the full MBA cases; designed for speed drills in wk 10+.
Other resources (external)
  • Case in Point (Marc Cosentino) — the classic textbook. Read the first 100 pages once.
  • RocketBlocks — paid drills for market-sizing and chart-reading. Great for the wk 10 drill phase.
  • Management Consulted — free industry primers. Use the night before if you get a pharma / energy / retail case you've never seen.
  • PrepLounge — free partner matching for live mocks. Critical for the live-reps weeks.
  • MBB firm websites — read 2–3 published case studies from McKinsey / BCG / Bain on your target industry. Steals language you can redeploy.

Jobs — live consulting postings

Aggregated from LinkedIn, Indeed, Google Jobs, and ZipRecruiter via the JSearch API. Feed auto-refreshes every 12 hours — the first visitor after the window triggers the refresh, everyone else gets the cached snapshot. Click a card to open the original posting on the source site.

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News — M&A deals, industry, hiring trends

Scraped from Google News (which aggregates Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ, FT, DealBook, PE Hub, etc.) via the free RSS search endpoint. Pick an industry bucket — FIG, TMT, healthcare, PE, hiring trends — each cached for two hours. Every card links straight to the original story on the publisher's site.

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Behaviorals — your resume → STAR stories → answers

Paste your resume. The AI pulls out your experiences, you edit anything it got wrong, it turns each experience into a STAR story, and then produces spoken-style STAR answers to any of the common behavioral questions. Everything stays in your browser.

①

drop your resume

Plain text, bullets, whatever — paste from a PDF export or LinkedIn. The AI will structure it.