Case Interview Checklist: From Six Weeks Out to the Close

Six weeks, and the arithmetic of forty-three published cases

Start with the material that exists rather than a generic timeline. Accenture publishes 21 practice cases in its case workbook, Deloitte publishes 10 openable cases, Oliver Wyman publishes 6, McKinsey publishes 4 with suggested answers, and Bain publishes 2 with two tiers of answer each.

Twenty-one plus ten plus six plus four plus two is 43, counted by hand on 30 September 2026. Kearney announces a promotional planning case whose content is not in the archived snapshot, so 44 are announced and 43 are readable.

Now the budget. At 45 minutes each, 43 cases take 43 times 0.75, which is 32.25 hours. At six hours a week that is 32.25 over 6, so 5.375 weeks, which rounds to 5.4. Six weeks is therefore the honest figure for working every published case once, and nobody needs to work all of them.

That is 36 hours across six weeks, which leaves slack against the 32.25 figure. The plan is ours; no firm publishes a preparation schedule.

L.E.K. publishes the only preparation list in our corpus that names no exercise at all. Its four suggestions are campus case workshops, reading the business press regularly, practicing with people who work in strategy consulting today, and reviewing the case studies on its own site. Simon-Kucher publishes the opposite emphasis, asking candidates to simulate interview conditions including time awareness. Both are published, and the second is the one that produces a number you can plan against.

The only dated case interview calendar a firm publishes

Almost every firm says its timeline varies. One job posting gives actual dates, and it is worth reading for the shape.

A Copenhagen posting read through Accenture's own Workday API at accenture.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com states: "Application deadline: October 18th, 2026." Then: "All candidates will receive an update on the outcome of their application no later than November 10th, 2026." Then: "The recruitment process will include an initial assessment followed by the Accenture Recruitment Bootcamp for selected candidates, scheduled for November 26th and 27th, 2026." And: "During the one-day bootcamp in Copenhagen, you will meet Accenture colleagues and take part in both case interviews and personal-fit interviews."

Do the arithmetic on those three dates, because it tells you how much preparation time a real process gives you.

• Deadline 18 October to bootcamp 26 November: 13 days left in October plus 26 in November, so 39 days.
• Deadline to outcome, 18 October to 10 November: 13 plus 10, so 23 days.
• Outcome to bootcamp, 10 November to 26 November: 16 days.

Verified by hand on 30 September 2026. So the candidate knows they are through 16 days before the case interviews, and has 39 days total from the moment they apply.

Sixteen days is not six weeks. The practical consequence is that serious case preparation starts at application rather than at invitation, because the confirmed window is a fortnight. The same posting says as much: "We therefore encourage you to familiarize yourself with consulting case interviews ahead of the bootcamp."

Deloitte publishes windows rather than dates, at deloitte.com: an initial interview scheduled "usually within one to two weeks", then "Expect two to three rounds of interviews", then an offer "in writing within one week of your final interview."

The night before, a case interview checklist from two firms

Two items on this list are genuinely easy to get wrong, and both are published.

The first is the calculator. Bain writes at bain.com that "calculators are allowed only for the digital assessment", and the same sentence goes on to rule them out during the interviews that follow. So the tool you used on a 30 to 40 minute online assessment is gone by the time you are in an interview, which means the arithmetic you rehearse has to be unaided.

The second is the sitting rule, and it differs by which assessment you are sent. The same page states that a candidate is told by email whether they must complete Sova or Test Gorilla. For Test Gorilla: "Complete the test in one sitting". For Sova: "You do not need to complete the Sova assessment in one sitting, but please ensure all sections are completed ahead of the deadline". Assuming the second rule while sitting the first is how a candidate loses an application, and this site published that error once.

McKinsey publishes six remote instructions on its interviewing page at mckinsey.com, and one of them is the least obvious item on any list here: "Disable previously installed AI software (such as note-taking tools or virtual assistants), as these may unintentionally record or assist with the interview". A meeting assistant you set up months ago and forgot is a live problem under that instruction.

Kearney covers the rest, in a Wayback snapshot at kearney.com: arrive early and dress professionally if in person; if virtual, minimize distractions, test your technology in advance, and dress the same way.

The first five minutes of a case interview, in order

Six moves, every one of them taken from a published instruction.

1. Listen to the whole prompt before planning. L.E.K.'s step one, and the first step of all four published sequences.
2. Take notes while it is being read. Deloitte's Strategic framing instruction puts the note-taking during the reading.
3. Paraphrase it back. Also step one at L.E.K.: repeat or paraphrase to be sure you understand.
4. State your assumptions and restate the facts. The other half of the same step.
5. Lay out the structure out loud. Bain's general list: structure, then walk through it.
6. Say why this structure beats the alternatives. Oliver Wyman's clause under pick an approach, and the move almost nobody makes.

Then one question, chosen for what it would change. Deloitte's caution applies here: "Ask questions, but don't use them as a crutch. While it's important to ask clarifying questions, avoid relying on them too heavily."

Ninety seconds covers all six moves comfortably. Against a 30-minute case portion, which is the lower bound Accenture publishes, 90 seconds is 5 percent of the time, and it buys the frame for the other 95.

Ten items for the room, five remote and five in person

Bain publishes two five-item lists at bain.com, and they are the only physical setup lists in our corpus.

In person, from the firm's own list. Bring pen and paper. Write legibly. Be ready to show your notes. The last one changes how you write: a page that may be read is a page with headings.

Remote, from the same source. Use a neutral or blurred background. Test your technology in advance. Turn off notifications. Announce when you are taking notes.

That last item solves a specific problem. On a video call, fifteen seconds of looking down reads as absence. Saying that you are writing converts it into work. Neither of Bain's lists mentions what to wear, and the twelve firms that do publish an attire instruction name four different registers that contradict each other.

Four more items are ours rather than any firm's, and they follow from the published constraints.

1. A single sheet, landscape, with your structure area on the left. You will be computing on the right.
2. A second sheet for arithmetic only. Mixing structure and calculation is how a unit gets lost.
3. Your six equations copied by hand that morning. Copying is rehearsal.
4. No calculator on the desk. Bain's rule says it will not be allowed, and having it visible invites the reach.

The close of a case interview, and the hour after

The close has four parts in a fixed order: the call, two figures, the risk with its direction, and a next step with a timeframe. Deloitte's fifth published step is the one that makes the fourth part mandatory: "Outline next steps and expected results/impacts". Six of the seven published sequences in our corpus end at the recommendation.

Then, within an hour, three things while the case is still in your head.

1. Write the prompt down from memory. If you cannot reproduce the objective, you were solving a version of it.
2. Write the two figures you quoted and recompute them. A wrong number found an hour later is a lesson. A wrong number never found is a habit.
3. Write the one branch you did not open. Coverage is the largest line in our structuring rubric, and this is the only record you will ever have of what you missed.

Do not write a self-assessed score. Bain says feedback comes from the firm, promising that "After each interview, you'll learn exactly how it went", and that it rests on "an objective scoring system" whose contents are not published. Inventing your own number against a scheme nobody has seen produces a feeling rather than information.

One more thing worth knowing about round structure. Oliver Wyman's regional page states that "all stages are evaluative and eliminatory", and BCG's Swiss page states that "Based on our overall impression from the first round, a decision may already be made at that stage." Both mean the same thing for your checklist: there is no round you can afford to treat as practice.

What to check against our weights

The four lines below are ours, read from the grading code in src/lib/grading. No consulting firm publishes a marking scheme.