URGENT HELP NEEDED PLEASE!!!!!!!!

So im a sophomore who applied at McKinsey for the soph business summer analyst. They just sent me the solve game 2 days ago and said to get it done by tonight. I was planning on doing it tonight but just learned that if you fail you can't apply until 12 months are up. This is tricky since later this year I'll be applying for my junior year internship and this would mean I wouldn't be able to apply for jr summer.

For context, I am not that prepared for it due to midterm work and last-minuteness. Even some of the practices I've run online I'm not even sure how I did since I couldn't run the simulation, but I do get the gist of the game (except red rock). Should I give the test a shot or should I just forget about sophomore in case it fucks up my junior chances? Or should I even pay for one of those online solvers (hopefully theyre not scams)?

9 Comments
 

There are plenty of great videos online which cover both ecosystem and red rocks studies. Just watch one of those and you'll be more than set. Helpful to have a paper for ecosystem, and for red rocks just remember you'll be pressed on time. As long as you don't completely shit the bed, I doubt Solve makes a big difference. Definitely do not pay for anything 

 

An hour or so is all you need to do well on Solve. It’s not that bad, trust me the case interview is the real thing to be preparing for. If you aren’t ready to do McK case interviews, that’s another question. Also 20-30% sounds very low, probably just skewed by the mass volume of poor applicants since they send Solve to almost everyone. Not even sure HR tracks this kind of info and much less the people on WSO.

 

This is exactly why I didn’t get an interview for this summer as a junior. My score carried over and I also wasn’t prepared taking it as a sophomore. Do with this as you please, wish I wouldn’t have done it as a sophomore. Only do it if you know how to case well, are actually a diversity candidate, and have a really good shot at it.

 

i was in the same situation sophomore year and ultimately decided not to apply. dont regret the decision as i now have a final round w mckinsey next wk for junior summer and got to take my time to prepare for the solve! idk how much it contributed to getting an interview but it def gave me peace of mind to prepare for it before doing it

 

bro im ngl i did solve this morning and it was actually insanely easy, i didn’t even watch any youtube videos bc i didn’t realize you can basically find the whole thing online; i got thru ecosystem in like 10 min and redrock in 15 here’s some tips:

redrock is a joke if u got accepted to college u can do it easily
for ecosystem j split all the organisms into 3 subsets at the start based on conditions and then try to visualize 3 segments within each subset based on producer - t1 t2 t3 predator. the first subset i tried worked and i could tell it had like several solutions js work it out on paper before submitting

but yeah its genuinely really easy, don’t stress at all i genuinely don’t think anybody smart enough to get into any t200 college at all can fail this assessment

 

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