Abheek Gupta

I started preparing for case studies by reading various cases from casebooks for the first 2-3 days. After that, I solved cases with seniors, batchmates, and my buddy from the company.

I did my case prep in a structured manner, covering one topic at a time and moving to the next type of case only after becoming thorough in the previous one. This helped me methodologically track my progress and improvise with time.

After doing each case I analyzed the case by writing down the structure again and seeing where I could have done better. Maintaining detailed notes of cases also helped a lot. I could use them again to revise during the last few days of preparation.

Every interview round for me had a case or a guesstimate.

Mostly it was just a case. The interviews typically start with behavioral questions to let the interviewee settle and then the case begins.

The interviewer in my interviews didn't want me to dig deep into the case and just wanted to see the nuances I can bring while breaking down the problem. So the focus was not on the details but on the approach and the structure that I used to solve the problem.

Similarly, for guesstimates, I was not asked to do all the calculations. The interviewer's focus was primarily on how I broke down the problem statement and approached the issue. The nuance and approach were therefore far more important than just the math or the final answers for the guesstimate.

I should have analyzed my cases better, I didn't maintain a detailed separate notebook to refer back to during the final lap of my preparation that's where I think I lacked during revision.

Secondly, I started preparing for cases very late, I shouldn't have waited for a shortlist to start preparing. I could have studied the structure of different types of cases and read cases to start my preparation before any I got any shortlists. Reading about how different industries work would have also helped a lot in tackling cases from unfamiliar topics