Question:

I’d like to thank you for your invaluable work, both the tutorial and the LOMS program. Before I found your website I only used Case in Point (Marc Cosentino).

I have a scientific background, so I’ve been preparing my interviews for about three months, I practiced a lot of cases alone and I got through the LOMS program six times.

Yesterday, I got an offer following a Bain interview with an office in Western Europe.

I have some notes for your newsletter:

  1. In the first round, I had only one estimation question, no “real” cases. They were mainly motivation interviews.
  1. In the second round the cases, were candidate-led and all with custom issue tree, so practice it.

Thank you again, and I look forward to your first year consultant newsletter.

I naturally did the donation to Kidpower.

My Reply:

Congratulations on your Bain offer, and thank you for your donation to KidPower.org

I’m glad the Case Interview Secrets video tutorials and Look Over My Shoulder® were useful to you.

One thing I want to highlight is the amount of time you invested in your preparation with LOMS and on your own.

While I do get some emails from people who practiced only a little and got an offer, the norm is that the people who get offers by and large spent a lot of time preparing.

Time spent on preparation is very highly correlated with getting offers (and I don’t think it is a stretch to argue the relationship is causal, not just correlated).

For the benefit of others reading this, I will continue to mention that it is best to prepare with a mix of live practice interviews and self-practice, such as with Look Over My Shoulder®.

But, many people do not have access to a qualified practice partner and the next best alternative is to do what you did — additional practice on your own and additional repetition with LOMS.

The general rule of thumb is to get as much practice and preparation time as possible — any way you can get it.