Can you 'wing' a case interview

I applied for MBB summer roles while recruiting for banking and was able to do pretty well in the first rounds without much prep, but the lack of practicing cases definitely hurt me in the superdays. It's obviously tough to recruit for different fields by nature of the differences in skills but I've seen some legends do it.

Never not prepare

sure, if you dont want the job.

To an extent for sure.

delet

There was a McKinsey video back in the day where they interviewed current analysts, and one of the analysts said "I didn't even know about case interviews till I was in the room!"

I'm of the opinion that you cannot. I've seen some very smart people make themselves look totally incompetent in case interviews, simply because they hadn't prepared. I don't recommend it.

At the very least, I recommend studying this, which u can do quickly: https://www.caseinterview.com/case_interview_frameworks.pdf

I got a job at MBB doing ~3 prep cases, for which I almost entirely focused on structure, and had a couple friends in consulting help me understand what the interviewees wanted (i.e. mental checks on math, explain structure before numbers etc.)

That being said, I worked in HF for 2 years before I went to MBB, and I wrote about 7 or 8 business plans in college, so I think I just generally knew more about business than most STEM grads from HYP that were applying. Frameworks are like financial ratios, they can be useful shorthand, but it's pretty obvious when someone throws ratios around without even a basic understanding of what they mean.

So to answer your question; if you understand business more than most other people around you, yes you can probably wing it. But it's a red flag to me that you're applying to so many different industries--you likely don't know enough about business to really stand out. Being mathematical and analytical won't help you at all.

Realistically, I think unless you're the kind of person who finishes the physics final an hour early (and ace it) having gamed the whole week before, you better study. You'd need to be a Jeff Skilling type to wing it and get the gig.

Realistically, I think the type of person that belongs at an MBB could study for a weekend and do fine on the case studies. At the least, a full day, would probably get you to a point where you won't embarrass yourself. Going into an interview without ever practicing a case, however, would set up the vast majority of candidates for embarrassment.

I have done this once for EY, the interviewer was planning on giving me some time but had to return earlier. Had only a very brief moment and the case was actually fine.

(it helped that the case was around a topic I knew a few things about).

Everyone should at least find some time to read some casing materials beforehand and mock-interview with a friend- even if it's only "tell me about yourself" kinda practice. Albeit there's no better practice for a case interview than actually going through a real one.