Oliver Wyman Numerical Reasoning Test
Hello, I just applied for an Entry Level Consultant at the firm and received this email saying that I have to complete this 30-min numerical exam in 2 days. Because I am very interested in this firm, I want to prepare my best and I'd love to know more about what kinda numerical questions I should expect.
Thank you very much!
Oliver Wyman Numerical Reasoning Test Help
Below is a compilation of useful information, tips and sample questions to help you on your upcoming Oliver Wyman numerical reasoning test. Hope you find it helpful!
Oliver Wyman Numerical Reasoning Test Format
The test consists of 20 multiple choice questions with a 30-minute time limit.
Tips on the Oliver Wyman Numerical Reasoning Test
* Make sure you test your internet and wifi speed before attempting the test. Loading time between the questions will reduce the amount of time you have to answer questions.
* Negative Marking - You lose 1 point for every incorrect answer.
10 Oliver Wyman Numerical Test Practice Questions
1. Countries A, B and C all became democracies in 2000. Country A holds elections every three years, country B every four years, and country C every five years. In what years will they next all hold elections?
2. We have x red balls and x blue balls in a bag. The probability of getting 2 red balls in succession is 2/9. What’s x?
3. P (Amy winning archery ) is a and probability of Bryan winning boxing is b. 0 a 1, 0 b 1. Probability of both winning is a-4b. 0 a – 4b 1 what’s the value of a?
4. The president of the USA serves terms of four years, with a maximum of two terms. If a century sees 16 presidents, how many of them served a second term?
5. A roulette wheel has 37 sections, 18 of which are red. If you bet on red and win, you double your money. Fyodor plays 111 games, staking $50 on red each time. How much money, on average, would he expect to win for his $5,500?
6. What is the probability that, in a randomly selected group of seven people, one person will have been born on each day of the week?
7. The average customer call to Phoneinc takes eight minutes, and operators work one of three eight-hour shifts. From 9pm-5am, 10% of calls are received, and from 5am-1pm 100 operators are on shift. If half of all callers ring from 1pm-9pm, how many people call Phoneinc in one day?
8. Nigel has $6.20 to spend, and wants to fill his bag with vegetables. Aubergines cost $0.50, courgettes cost $0.20, he has room for 22 pieces and wants to spend as much as possible. How many courgettes should he buy?
9. It takes Nora two hours to paint a wall 5m by 8m, and Zack three hours to paint a wall 4m by 9m. Together, how long will it take them to paint a wall 10m by 12m?
10. The company has annual sales of $600,000, of which 5% is profit. The CEO wants to increase the profit margin to 10%, but costs are set to rise 15%. By how much must sales increase?
If you're looking to prepare for a numerical test, JobTestPrep has everything you need to know for Mathematical Reasoning Test interviews, including a myriad of questions with thoroughly explained answers.
http://skukre1.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/oliver-wyman-numerical-reasonin…
That should help.
Looks like we are at the same page, OP
I think the questions in the link are taken straight from the test. I wouldn't worry about it too much, it's not really something you can study for and you won't finish. Skip a question if you get stuck on it. I'm pretty sure the test is just a formality though.
A lot of the answers in that link are wrong...
It's purposefully too difficult (or long, really) for the allotted time, and tests you primarily on numerical reasoning. As far as I can tell, its a feeble imitation of the McKinsey PST. I can't imagine it has a major impact on their decision to interview you, unless you indicate a complete inability to function with numbers.
i think it possible to get all 30 questions, i was able to get 21/30
So you took it before? How did you prepare for it? I think some of the questions might take me a while to figure out.
honestly, I don't think you can really prepare for it? I didn't really prepare, just brushed up on some geometry formulas. Looking back on it, the best thing to do is probably to learn or brush up on old math, like probabilities and area formulas and crap.
Anyone know how long it takes to hear back from OW after taking the test?
Usually a few days
i heard back a week later
Oliver Wyman numerical test (Originally Posted: 11/10/2010)
before doing any interview, I was invited by OW to do a numerical online test. it consisted of 30 questions in 20 mins. the time was short, and the questions are not numbered.
During the exam, the test said that I submitted 17 questions and skipped 5. So I am not sure whether I answered 17 questions and skipped 5 which means that I went through 22 (17+5) questions in total, or I actually answered 12(17-5) questions and skipped 5 ,so I went through 17 in total.
anyone who done the test can clarify the meaning of submitted questions?
How was your experience with the subsequent interviews? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot!
How do you know you did 17? Is that because it said "Problem 17" on the top right? If so it probably means you did only 12.
I don't think I received anything that said I submitted x questions after I hit submit after time ran out.
I wonder because I took it awhile ago and haven't received a response. I think I answered 16 or so and skipped like 2 or 3.
Anyone know what a good score is?
Doesn't matter now. I guess for reference, I answered a little more than half of them, probably got all of them right, didn't guess on any, and got an interview.
No it didn't say problem 17.
on the top right there were 2 numbers:
the first ones titled number of problems submitted: 17 and the second one it says :number of questions skipped 5.
so what is the deal?
@qweretyq: out of the 16 answered, how many you think were right?
also was it for analyst or associate poistion?
GMC from undergrad
I think I got all of them right, maybe 1 wrong. I was surprised at the difficulty of the time constraint, because I am usually good at fast math and this kind of stuff (I have scored high on AMC, McKinsey test etc)
I still haven't heard back from though so maybe I didn't pass
I'd guess that skipped questions aren't considered "submitted", but I have no real idea. It just seems less simple to have a category for all questions you looked at and for the ones that you skipped vs having one for questions you skipped and one for questions you answered. Occam's Razor-esque.
@wunderful: maybe you are right.
you applied for analyst or associate? and was it GMC or FS at ow?
@qweretyq: to which office you applied? and when was that?
that test was impossible. ow kinda pisses me off BC of shit like this they do
What's the point of tests if you're going to make them easy?
No fixed pass mark. The average for successful candidates is roughly 60%.
@afalcon10: did you do the test? how much you got? what was the result? got an interview? and which office?
I WILL TAKE THE TEST
don't work on google chrome:( no ty
hey my test was for NYC financial consulting, analyst.
@porcineaviation: so if there is no fixed pass mark, how ow passes people and fails other? according to what?
moreover, how you know that 60 % pass the test?
i applied to san fran a long time ago (like aug/sep) my friend heard back a while before me for a different office (not sure which) - he passed and said he got around 15 right... a little relieved but still haven't heard back from them so not getting my hopes up
The test is just a formality. People who answered 3 questions got interviews at my school.
It really isn't. The reason those people got interviews is because there isn't a fixed pass mark, and results are considered alongside the CV.
Is there any difference between the financial services track online test and the general management test? Is the general management test GMAT format as well (i.e. probability, geometry, etc.)?
Thank You
for what it's worth, i skipped maybe 5 and answered 6 (which i'm pretty sure were all correct) and got an interview for general management consulting NYC. i'm a top 20 ugrad with an average gpa, almost 2 years of nonrelevant work experience for a fortune 500 company.
my interview is this week.
So I heard back a week after the test and was invited to an interview. I have my interview coming up this Monday. I'll let you know how it goes.
If you want details, please PM me, I don't want to publicize my opinions lol
Oliver Wyman FS Test (Originally Posted: 12/12/2012)
Hey all! So I have been invited to take the OWFS online test and have been given a date for an interview if I am successful and they decide to invite me. I have two questions: Should I be getting excited at this opportunity or is this more of a blanket email sent out and they pick a very small percent of the successful test takers? Either way I will be taking it very seriously as an opportunity is an opportunity. Secondly, if anyone has any experience in taking these tests could they comment on the difficulty and what hey might recommend to prepare given that they have to be taken within seven days.
Thanks!
Count me in , would you?
In my opinion, the OW quant test is harder than the McKinsey PST. That being said, I believe that OW has a certain point threshold, over which they invite applicants to interview. You should feel kind of excited, though, because you passed the initial screening! Now you just have to wow them for the rest of the process.
I'm pretty sure if you do your research about the test, they value quality over quantity when answering. It has tons of questions making it incredibly hard to get it all done and correct. Search on the site and general internet (glassdoor maybe?) to further prove my beliefs. There is a lot of forum discussion elsewhere about it. You can get a negative score too fyi.
I'd say it's the opposite of a blanket email. Most people who get invited to the test will get an interview, so they're not inviting everyone. I don't think the score threshold is too high. If I remember correctly, there's 30 questions, and I had classmates who said they got 10 and they still get the interview.
The questions are similar to high school math competition questions, so if you want to see similar questions, look at AMC questions, but don't stress. http://amc.maa.org/
Since you only get 20 minutes, I think a very small proportion of test takers finish the test, let alone answer every question correctly. If you don't know how to approach a problem within 5-10 seconds of reading it, skip it. There's no point spending time arrive at an incorrect answer. I'd aim for somewhere in the teens. If you confidently answer >20 questions, you're golden.
You know what the nickname for Oliver Wyman is, right? All of her hy...never mind.
If I recall, you were allowed to use a calculator on that test...?
I don't want you to reveal all of the details but would you consider it easier or harder than the questions in the Wordpress link earlier in the thread?
Congratulations on the interview
Oliver Wyman test issues (Originally Posted: 10/12/2011)
Hey guys,
I got invited by OW FS to do the online numerical test (30 questions in 20 min). Aside from the difficulty of the test, the website was REALLY slow (I was loosing 20+ seconds per question when I pressed the 'next' button and the page actually started loading).
On top of that, after question 10 I was redirected to a blank page and had to refresh the browser, consequently losing even more time.
In the end I was only able to answer 6 questions out of 30, which will most likely not be enough...
I was wondering if any of you have had this experience with Oliver Wyman's tests and if there is any chance I can retake it. I already sent HR an e-mail explaining the situation but no response yet.
The test was hard but I feel like if I had the full 20 minutes I could have at least answered +16 questions, and it would really pi__ me off to miss an interview opportunity because of a technical issue...
Cheers..
Did you go back to the website and reattempt the test? Similar thing happened to me. I went back to the test portal and it told me that I had logged out mid-test and told me to retake it.
It didn't actually logged out, it just redirected me to a blank page. After a few secs I noticed it was taking me nowhere so I just refreshed the page and my next question loaded, but since the clock was still ticking I lost a considerable amount of time...
are these tests for summer internships?
No, full time in Europe
lol onthegrind i got the exact same score as you and did not receive an interview. like i said, its much less important than gpa and prior internships, as stupid as that may be.
How did you know what your score is?
I was certain I got those questions right.
I got through 18 questions (skipping 2 of them), and consider myself good with numbers. My GPA is probably too low to get an interview either way.
Hi there! Is anyone here applying to the London office? Do you know if it also takes a week to hear back from the online tests? Just finished mine but the email said the results will be out by Nov 15 the latest so I'm not sure how long I should wait. Many thanks!
I just did the online test. Same, I consider myself pretty good with numbers but I only got through 17 (skipping 4-5). I don't think I've done enough :( The Verbal was much easier though, got through like 23 of those questions.
Mine was for the London office and yeah the email inviting you to do the test said you'll hear back by the Nov 15 at the latest. I reckon they'll just take their time on this. Did you get an email after you took the test?
I read somewhere 'half points' are enough, not sure if that means at least 15 & 15 or 30 accumulatively. I hope for 30. Did you also get the test invitation on Sep 19?
Oh yeah I hope it's a total of 30 too, or I've definitely ballsed it up. I got the invite yesterday (25th Sept). Good luck to you anyway!
Out of interest, have you heard back Chloe?
Hi everyone, I've applied for an entry level consultant role at OW and got an invite for the OW test. Besides the link above, is it helpful also using the GMAT as prep tool?
No. If you want to prep, get some old SAT books i guess
Thanks onthegrind, good luck for Monday!!!
I'll be taking my online test on Tuesday
Does anyone know if the online OW verbal reasoning test is multiple choice (right/false/cannot say)?
there is no fixed format, but normally it should be open statements.
Has anybody heard back after the online test? I get the feeling that they are just waiting til enough people have taken it and then will take the highest x% of scores. Seems like the cutoff point is generally around being able to answer 10-12 questions, I've seen comments from people with these scores that have passed and that haven't.
Also, does anybody know if they pay for tickets for foreign candidates to fly internationally? Heading to London from New York. It would be a pain to wait to hear back til Nov 15th with interviews a week away and then having to buy my own ticket.
I heard back a week after I took the test. That seems to be their rough timeline for reviewing test results along with the rest of your application.
We're you invited for an interview? I was just in contact with an HR person there, she made it sound like they were only going to notify people on Nov 15th (this is for the London office). Regarding ticket subsidy, she said they may do a phone or video conferencing interview instead... Still kind of a pain to wait 2 months to find out if you even get an interview.
Hey Cheme, I didn't get through. I am from target schools, both undergrad and postgrad.
I took the test on September 24th, applied to the London office. I consider myself to be pretty good at math- I got perfect scores on all my standardized tests thus far - and this test destroyed me. Like, literally. I didn't even finish answering half of the questions they asked. It was awful. I'm pretty bummed cause I did spend a few days doing solid preparation, using GMAT books, but the test is just so difficult that I'm not sure if it was worth all the effort. It is one test that truly separates the sheep from the goats. I will have to see whether I get invited for an interview. I really hope they still say yes. Sigh.
Has anyone applied to their SITO practice?
You can score 0 and get an interview if your CV is good enough. It's only used at the margin.
I'm not applying for OW, but my girlfriend was, and I was looking over her shoulder while she was taking this test.
I thought that test was insanely hard. I work at MBB and thought the McKinsey PST from when I was recruiting was way easier.
Personally, I'd disagree strongly with Ampharos's comment. I found the PST to be much harder. You're really talking apples and oranges. OW's test contains pure math problems, whereas McK's PST requires you to analyze text and make a lot of inferences in addition to a decent amount of quant questions. I found that the nuanced and subjective nature of McK's test made it a lot harder, at least for me. Ended up doing well enough on the tests to get final rounds with both firms this year, but I had a pretty decent amount of wrong answers when going through practice tests for the PST, whereas with OW, I'm very confident I got at least 90% of the answers right with no prior practice.
I have taken both as well, and I agree with @Ampharos. To me, the test at OW was much harder. The fact that you lose points for each missed question makes you think about the test differently. You can just guess on the PST. I will say, however, that the McK PST was more stressful, if only due to the fact that there is a proctor and you are seated next to your competition.
does anyone know if for the online tests we can skip questions and come back to them after? thank you
Yeah, I think so.
Hey no this is wrong. You can come back anytime during the time you are taking this test. I skipped some of them and came back later. Before you take the test, there will be 5 practice questions.
thanks! and do you know if we can take the practice test independently of the real test? (or if we need to complete it just before starting the real tests) thank you
Just took the test. Got to question 15 i think with a couple of passes. Man it was hard.
They are supposed to send out interview notifications today... anybody hear anything yet?
I haven't. Been checking my email all day though. I feel like its a bad sign that I haven't heard anything yet.
which office is this for? pretty sure US and Canada are done recruiting, for undergrads at least
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