Written Case Interviews 2026: Which Firms Publish One

Eleven mentions of a written case, three published figures

The word written appears far more often than any detail about it. Four of the eleven mentions are explicitly conditional, and only three carry a number of any kind.

Four of these are hedged in the firm's own words. Alvarez & Marsal writes "you could be asked", EY writes "We may also ask you", KPMG India writes "may be conducted as", and PA Consulting writes "we may ask you". Preparing for a written case at those four means preparing for something you may never sit.

The two mentions this page had missed

Two firms publish a written exercise on their own sites, and neither appeared here until 5 October 2026.

BCG, in the Netherlands only. Its Netherlands location page labels the stage "Round 2 Interviews" and says "The final round consists of four interviews". The four are quoted as "A personality-based interview with a recruiter (45 min)", "Two case interviews (60 min)" and "A written case (2,5h)". The firm writes 2,5h and this page keeps its wording. What the page does not say is what the candidate produces, whether slides are involved, who marks it, or whether 2,5h holds outside the Netherlands. We read 315 pages of the firm's careers site and this is the only one that names a written exercise at all. Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Nordics, Germany and Austria publish none.

Bain, with no region attached. Its interviewing page lists a step called "Complete a written assignment" and describes it: "You'll work on a take-home challenge related to your role. You'll likely have three days to complete it and in some cases, you'll present the result." Three days is a deadline rather than a clock, so it sits in the same column under a different meaning. The page does not say which roles receive it, what the deliverable is, or whether the presentation is systematic.

Two figures for these firms circulate on preparation sites, 2 hours for BCG and 55 to 60 minutes for Bain. The first contradicts the firm's own page, which says 2,5h. The second appears nowhere on bain.com, across the 233 pages of its careers sitemap. The firm's own wording is the only figure worth rehearsing against.

Ninety minutes for a written case, in one office of eight

OC&C's brochure prints a stage list for each of eight offices, which makes it the only document in the corpus that can settle whether a written case is standard.

Rotterdam's second stage reads: "1 x 45 minute motivational interview, 1 x 60 minute case study interview with Consultants and/or Managers, 1 x 90 minute written case study interview with Associate Consultants." London, Milan, Paris, Warsaw, Australia, the United States and Germany contain no written exercise at all.

One office in eight is 12.5 percent. So a written case at this firm is a Rotterdam practice, and a page that calls it a consulting stage is wrong about seven offices of the one firm that publishes enough detail to check.

Two details in that Rotterdam line repay attention. Adding the second stage gives 45 plus 60 plus 90, which is 195 minutes, and the written case is 90 of them. Dividing 90 by 195 gives 0.4615, so the written exercise is 46 percent of the stage. And it is held by Associate Consultants, the entry grade, while stage three belongs to Associate Partners and Partners. The firm puts its longest single exercise in front of its most junior assessors.

Three published positions for the written case

Position changes what the exercise is for, and the four firms that publish a position do not agree on it.

Compass Lexecon names it inside the job posting: "Our interview process for Analysts involves two stages. The first stage is one 60-minute interview with both motivational and technical questions. The second stage includes a written case study and a technical interview." The same wording appears across seven European offices, so here the written case is firm policy rather than local habit.

Roland Berger's Netherlands page puts it at the very end: "you will be interviewed by two of our partners and write a case study." The exercise then feeds a presentation "to a panel of four consultants of Roland Berger Amsterdam."

Capital One puts its written work before everything else: the Data Science Challenge "is a take-home assignment you will complete before the Power Day."

So the same object appears at stage two, at the final stage, and before the process starts. The only way to know which you have is the invitation, and every firm above names the recruiter as the source of that detail.

Written homework with nothing to hand in

One firm in this set requires written work and collects no document. Deloitte's UK early careers page says: "Before you attend, we need you to complete some mandatory preparation which involves researching and conducting analysis on a topic."

What that preparation becomes is a conversation: "A discussion about your topic preparation with one of our assessors. This will be a two-way discussion which typically lasts around 30-40 minutes. The assessor will ask questions throughout to help keep the discussion flowing."

No report, no slides, no submission. The analysis exists only in your head and your notes, and the assessment is your ability to talk about it under questions. That is a different skill from producing a structured document under a clock, and the page never uses the word case.

The topic is not published, the time to spend is not published, and no rule appears about whether notes may be brought in. Everything you would want to know about scale sits in the invitation email.

Reading a pack is not writing one

Two exercises share the name case study and have almost nothing in common. Distinguishing them is the single most useful thing on this page if your invitation is vague.

Strategy& UK publishes the reading version with its clock: "A structured case study interview (c.45 mins); You'll be given a case study with a slide pack, which reflects a real client project we have worked on. You'll have c.10 minutes to look over the information provided before being asked to develop some recommended solutions for the client."

Ten minutes out of a 45 minute slot is 22 percent of the time spent reading before you speak. Dividing 10 by 45 gives 0.2222. Nothing is produced, and the output is spoken.

The written version at OC&C Rotterdam runs 90 minutes and produces a document. The ratio of reading to producing is inverted, the assessor is different, and the failure modes are different. A candidate who rehearses one and sits the other is rehearsing the wrong exercise.

The only published description of the document itself belongs to the assessment publisher. SHL's own list of six exercises puts it first: "Candidates receive a case study or scenario and must analyze the information, identify key issues, and write a clear, structured report with recommendations." Three verbs, no page count, no format.

A worked ninety-minute split

Since one in-room clock exists, it is worth rehearsing against it. Below is a split we use and it is ours rather than any firm's, so treat it as a rehearsal target instead of a rule.

The minutes add to 90. The shares add to 100.0 percent, which is the check that matters here: 16.7 plus 11.1 plus 44.4 plus 16.7 plus 11.1 comes to exactly 100.0.

The 40 minute block is deliberately the largest and it is still under half the time. Two thirds of a written case is reading, deciding and rereading. The one first-hand account we have of a written exercise, from a named candidate at Roland Berger in December 2016, reports 45 minutes of quiet preparation followed by 45 minutes of presentation, a one-to-one ratio. He also reports being banned from slides and given flipcharts instead. One person, one office, nine years ago.

Our own rubric weights the parts a written deliverable turns on. Synthesis carries Answer first 35 out of 100, Evidence 25, Risk 20 and Next step 20, which is close to the shape SHL describes when it asks for a structured report with recommendations. Those weights come from our code and no firm publishes a comparable scheme; the reasoning is on how an answer is assessed, and the synthesis drill runs free and without an account from the tools page.

What no firm publishes about a written case

Five gaps, and they are the ones that would change how you prepare.

No firm publishes the format of the deliverable. No page count, no slide count, no file type. SHL asks for a clear structured report with recommendations and gives no length.

No firm publishes what triggers the exercise. Alvarez & Marsal attributes it to the role, EY to the country, service line and role, PA Consulting to the role. Three renvois and no criterion.

No firm publishes whether a human reads it. SHL mentions assessors without saying which exercise they watch, and no consulting firm in this corpus says who marks a written submission.

No firm publishes a scoring scheme for writing. KPMG India comes closest by naming written communication as one of four things a case can assess, which tells you the dimension exists without telling you its weight.

And eight of the eleven mentions carry no figure at all. Of the three that do, two are slots inside a round and the third is a deadline for work done at home, so there is no single published length for a written case. For the presentation that often follows the writing see consulting case presentations, for the full day these exercises sit inside see the assessment center written case, and for the sequences themselves see the consulting interview process.

What changed on this written case page

We correct in public and we date the correction. The body above carries what the firms publish today, and this log carries what this page used to say.

5 October 2026. The count was wrong, and the count was the page's thesis. The earlier version said that nine firms name a written exercise and that exactly one publishes how long it lasts, OC&C Rotterdam at 90 minutes. Two more firms publish a figure on their own sites. BCG prints a written case of 2,5h inside the round 2 interviews on its Netherlands location page, and Bain lists a take-home written assignment with three days to complete it. The count is now eleven mentions and three published figures. The summary, the figures at the head of the page, the table and the closing section all carried the old number and all have been rewritten, and both firms now sit in the table with their source dated in the ledger.

5 October 2026. The three figures are no longer counted as one kind of thing. A 90 minute slot inside a round, a 2,5h slot inside a round and a three day window for work done at home answer different questions. The page says which is which where it counts them, and the ninety minute split further up is still built on the only in-room clock we can read.