Case Interview Cheat Sheet: What Seven Firms Publish

Sixty-five published instructions, counted by firm

Most summaries of this subject are somebody's house method. This one is an inventory.

Nineteen plus thirteen plus nine plus seven plus six plus six plus five is 65, checked by hand on 30 September 2026. The largest single list is Bain's, at bain.com, which splits its nineteen across any interview, in person and remote.

BCG sits outside that table because it publishes something different in shape: six recommendations and six pitfalls rather than a sequence. Listen Actively, Be Yourself, Think Structurally, Communicate Clearly, Clarify Assumptions, Show Your Thinking, against Panic Under Pressure, Rush Your Response, Overcomplicate Solutions, Ignore Feedback, Stay Silent, Interrupt. Twelve more items, counted separately because they are not steps.

What none of the eight firms publishes is a weight. Zero, across every firm file behind this site. Any sheet that ranks these instructions by importance is ranking them on somebody's judgment, and it should say whose.

The seven case interview sequences, and none opens on a framework

Line the sequences up by position and the shared skeleton appears, along with the places one firm has a step the others do not.

Three readings come out of that grid.

Every one of the four opens on comprehension rather than structure. Listen, understand, pinpoint, take your time. None of them opens with a framework.

Only Deloitte has a step after the recommendation. Its fifth is "Outline next steps and expected results/impacts", and six of the seven sequences in our corpus end at the recommendation.

Hypotheses appear in two of the four as explicit steps, and in a third inside another step. They never appear first.

Two verbatim lines are worth carrying on the sheet itself. L.E.K.'s step one, from its preparation page at lek.com: "Listen to the question, repeat or paraphrase to be sure you understand; state your assumptions and restate the facts." And Oliver Wyman's clause under pick an approach, at oliverwyman.com: "Show your client why it's better than the alternatives."

The four case interview rules where two firms contradict each other

A cheat sheet that smooths these over would be lying by omission. All four are published on both sides.

1. Clarifying questions. L.E.K. makes Ask questions a whole numbered step. Deloitte, at deloitte.com, writes: "Ask questions, but don't use them as a crutch. While it's important to ask clarifying questions, avoid relying on them too heavily." Our resolution, labeled as ours: ask what would change your structure, assume the rest out loud.
2. Frameworks. Kearney, in a Wayback snapshot at kearney.com, writes: "Try to avoid forcing your solution to fit a standard framework. The only things it needs to fit are the problem, the business, and the objectives." A Simon-Kucher recruiting lead in Frankfurt writes that understanding economic principles and frameworks can be beneficial, especially in pricing and marketing. Our resolution: learn them, then build rather than retrieve.
3. Holding versus adapting, inside one firm. L.E.K.'s step three says stick to your approach. Its step six says show "flexibility and a willingness to rethink in the face of new data". Our resolution: new data changes course, difficulty does not.
4. Coachable versus firm, inside one firm. Kearney writes: "Be coachable, soliciting feedback and integrating it quickly. At the same time, be firm about the things you believe in." No resolution is published, and ours is the same as the third.

Note what all four have in common. Each names a real tension in the exercise, and each one is where a memorized rule breaks. That is why they belong on a one-page sheet more than the shared skeleton does: the skeleton you will remember, the trade-offs you will not.

The equations, with one worked line each

Six equations cover most case arithmetic. Each line below is computed by hand on 30 September 2026, with stated inputs.

1. Profit equals revenue minus cost. Revenue is volume times price. 400,000 units at 30 dollars is 12 million dollars.
2. Unit contribution equals price minus variable cost. At 30 dollars against 25.50 dollars, contribution is 4.50 dollars.
3. Breakeven volume equals fixed cost over unit contribution. 7.2 million dollars over 4.50 dollars is 1.6 million units.
4. Margin and markup differ. Cost 75 dollars, price 100 dollars. Margin is 25 over 100, so 25 percent. Markup is 25 over 75, so 33.3 percent, rounded from 33.33.
5. Percentage points differ from percent. A margin moving from 12 percent to 9 percent is 3 points, and 3 over 12 is a 25 percent fall in the margin.
6. Doubling time is roughly 72 over the growth rate. At 6 percent, 72 over 6 is 12 years. Checked exactly: 1.06 to the twelfth is 2.012, so the approximation holds here.

One more line that appears in almost every investment case. Payback equals capital over annual cash. 4.8 million dollars over 1.2 million dollars a year is 4 years.

The two lines on this list that cause the most trouble are four and five, and they cause it in the same way: both involve choosing a denominator. State the denominator out loud every time and both errors become impossible.

The two published case interview clocks, and the 15 minutes outside

Only two firms in our corpus publish a clock for a case interview, and any sheet claiming a standard length is inventing one.

Subtract the Accenture figures and the non-case overhead is 15 minutes at both ends of the range: 45 minus 30 is 15, and 60 minus 45 is 15. So a quarter of the meeting is greeting, background and your own questions, and that share does not shrink when the meeting is short.

The workbook at accenture.com also names the three case types it uses, with a frequency claim: "The "Great Unknown" and "Back of the Envelope" cases are the most common types of cases." The third, The Parade of Facts, it calls relatively rare because of how long the description takes to deliver.

The workbook carries a 2018 copyright and reports 435,000 people against 791,000 in the firm's September 2026 postings, so it is dated. We use it for its method and say when it was written.

What our own weights add, and the branch worth risking

The firms publish instructions with no priority attached. We publish weights, and they are ours, read from the grading code in src/lib/grading.

How to use a case interview cheat sheet on the day

A sheet you read on the morning of an interview should hold six things, and the list above supplies all six.

1. The shared opening. Listen, restate, state assumptions, restate the facts. Four moves, one from L.E.K.'s step one.
2. Your own structure test. Would these branches change for a different industry? Kearney's question.
3. The justification sentence. Why this approach beats the alternatives. Oliver Wyman's clause, and eight seconds to say.
4. The six equations. Copied out by hand, because copying them is the last rehearsal.
5. The four contradictions with your chosen resolution. Written in your words, so you do not decide them under time.
6. The close, with a next step. Deloitte's fifth step is the one six other sequences omit.

Our structure drill and math drill score against the weights above, line by line, with the first correction named. Both are free and neither needs an account. Neither one will hold the sheet for you during the interview, and neither can decide the four contradictions, which is the part that has to be settled in advance.

For the time-ordered version of this material, see the case interview checklist. For the formulas worked at length, see case interview formulas. For the criteria the same firms publish, see what interviewers score.