case in point framework vs victor cheng's frameworks

I was just wondering which frameworks do you find more useful? I know the best approach would be to somehow integrate the two and develop my own, but I don't really think I'm at that level yet so I'm trying to get a good foundation before I can start doing so.

A lot of people give case in point a lot of heat for having 12 frameworks, but I find them pretty similar for the most part (with a couple of exceptions) so that you're only really learning 4 or 5 main frameworks. The cip frameworks, however, are really specific and structured, for better and worse.

Victor Cheng's frameworks seems to only really emphasis 2 main frameworks (profitability and business situation), but his business situation framework kinda seems all over the place.

Any suggestions for which one I should use to build a solid foundation? Many thanks.

9 Comments
 

IMO, if you've already digested Victor Cheng's and Case in Point frameworks, then it's time to move onto the next level of preparation: case interview practice. They both give nice overviews that may help you think of different perspectives than you're used to (e.g. a finance major may overlook the importance of customer segmentation when evaluating a proposed loyalty program), but neither is sufficient - as Santini pointed out.

Read through some of the cases in the casebook and map out how you'd approach it (starting from a blank sheet of paper). Once you are comfortable with that process, start practicing live with a time limit (i.e. 30-45 minutes) to get a better feel for how the real interview process goes.

Hope that helps (and btw, I found the Wharton Casebook quite useful as well).

 
Best Response

Landed MBB. CIP is worth reading through once, but not more than that. The market sizing portion is quite helpful, actually, but the "frameworks" are unnecessarily complicated. (WetFeet's is also really good for market sizing.)

I didn't really like VC's either. His videos are great, but not the frameworks. Personally, I used the Wharton casebook as well at the beginning. Once I got more advanced, I looked at David Orvhall's Crack the Case. Didn't follow DO's to the T, but it teaches you a great way of thinking about different cases and helps you develop a tailored framework for each case.

Finally, once you get really close to the interviews, you should tailor your practice to different firm's interviews. Each firm does theirs a little differently, and it helps to know what each is like.

I have a whole host of MBA casebooks. Wharton and Ross ones are amazing, Columbia and Haas ones are okay. You should be able to find them online, but let me know if you want any of them.

 

I have used both CIP and LOMS, as well as the casebooks from some business schools. My view is that you need to decide what fits you better.

For example, I don't like doing mocks, as they make me feel very awkward (can't simulate a real scenario), so I only did one mock (a disaster). Still, at the actual interviews I felt fine and I got MBB offers.

LOMS worked better for me, because it allowed me to really think of the question asked and still put it into a structured approach. CIP would just send my brain in search of a framework and the laundry list of things on each, which I haven't found useful. This is particularly true since almost no case will fit neatly into any one of the many frameworks provided. I did, however, use the first part of the book on the case interview commandments, market sizing, etc.

As others mentioned, the b-school casebooks are useful: read the prompt without looking at the answer. Take a crack at structuring an approach and compare. Reading the answers also helps to see how some apparently simple questions can be quite tricky because of the phrasing.

Hope it helps

 

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