Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer.

Last Updated: June 10, 2026

 

The EY case interview is a 30 to 45 minute business problem that tests how well you structure an issue, work through numbers, and deliver a recommendation a real client could act on. This guide breaks down the full EY interview process, the case types each practice gives, a complete worked example, and the prep plan that gets candidates offer-ready in 4 to 6 weeks.

 

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Key Takeaways

 

EY case interviews are 30 to 45 minute business cases used across EY Consulting and Strategy and Transactions, and most candidates can pass them with 4 to 6 weeks of structured practice.

 

• EY runs two to three interview rounds, and most rounds pair one behavioral interview with one case interview

 

• Case style depends on the practice: EY Consulting cases are practical and interviewer-guided while EY-Parthenon cases are candidate-led

 

• Glassdoor users rate EY interview difficulty 2.9 out of 5, easier than MBB but still selective for consulting roles

 

• Around 80% of cases fall into five types: profitability, market entry, operations, technology transformation, and market sizing

 

• The fastest way to stand out is closing every case with two or three implementation steps the client could take in the first 90 days

 

What Is the EY Case Interview?

 

An EY case interview is a live business problem you solve with your interviewer during EY’s consulting and strategy hiring process. Each case runs 30 to 45 minutes and assesses four skills: structured thinking, quantitative ability, business judgment, and clear communication. You will face at least one case in nearly every client-facing consulting role at the firm.

 

EY is one of the Big Four professional services firms, with more than 390,000 employees serving clients in over 150 countries. The firm generates more than $50 billion in annual revenue across audit, tax, consulting, and transaction services. That scale shapes the cases you get because they mirror the large transformation, finance, and operations projects EY actually sells.

 

Consulting careers at EY split into two paths. EY Consulting covers business consulting and technology consulting, while Strategy and Transactions houses EY-Parthenon, the firm’s strategy arm. Knowing which path you applied to matters because the case style differs sharply between them.

 

What Does the EY Interview Process Look Like?

 

EY runs two to three interview rounds after an online application and assessment stage. Most rounds pair one behavioral interview with one case interview, each lasting 30 to 45 minutes. According to Glassdoor data from more than 10,000 reported interviews, the full process takes about 30 days from application to offer.

 

Stage	What happens	Typical timing
Online application	Resume and transcript screen. Referrals meaningfully raise your odds of passing this stage	1 to 2 weeks
Online assessment	Numerical, logical, and situational judgment tests, plus a recorded video interview for many entry-level roles	3 to 7 days
First round	One behavioral interview and one case interview with consultants or managers	30 to 45 minutes each
Final round	Case and behavioral interviews with senior managers or partners, sometimes plus a group case	Half day

 

Not every candidate gets every stage. Undergraduates and entry-level applicants almost always complete the EY online assessment, while experienced hires often skip straight to interviews. Some campuses compress the final round into a single super day with multiple back-to-back interviews and a group exercise.

 

What Types of Case Interviews Does EY Give?

 

EY gives two distinct case styles depending on the practice you applied to. EY Consulting runs practical, interviewer-guided cases built around implementation problems. EY-Parthenon and other Strategy and Transactions teams run candidate-led strategy cases that feel much closer to what MBB firms use.

 

This is the most misunderstood part of EY prep. Having coached hundreds of candidates 1-on-1, I estimate at least half prepare for the wrong case style because they never checked which practice their role sits in.

 

In an EY Consulting case, expect a client struggling with a stalled technology rollout, a finance transformation, or an operations process producing errors. The interviewer guides you from question to question, so structure each answer but expect far more direction than you would get at a pure strategy firm. Candidates on Glassdoor describe these cases as data-heavy, with lots of information to capture and less room to drive the agenda yourself.

 

By contrast, EY-Parthenon case interviews are candidate-led from start to finish. You build the structure, ask for the data you need, and propose each next step while the interviewer mostly observes how you think.

 

Across both styles, roughly 80% of EY cases fall into five buckets.

 

Case type	What it tests	Example prompt
Profitability	Diagnosing revenue and cost drivers	A grocery chain’s profits fell 20% in two years. Why, and what should it do?
Market entry	Market attractiveness and entry strategy	Should a US insurer expand into Brazil?
Operations	Process and efficiency analysis	A hospital network’s ER wait times doubled. How do you fix it?
Technology transformation	Business case for a tech investment	Should a retail bank spend $200M replacing its core banking system?
Market sizing	Estimation logic and fast math	How many EV charging stations will Texas need by 2030?

 

Start your prep with profitability case interviews because they appear more often than any other type. Once you can diagnose a profit decline cleanly, every other case type gets easier.

 

Next, work on market entry case interviews, which show up constantly in EY-Parthenon and transaction strategy interviews. These cases reward candidates who quantify the market opportunity before debating whether to enter.

 

Finally, market sizing questions can appear as standalone warmups or sit inside a larger case. Practice estimating with round numbers like 320 million for the US population so your math stays fast and clean.

 

How Do You Solve an EY Case Interview?

 

Solve every EY case with the same six steps: take notes, clarify the objective, build a structure, work the numbers, connect findings to implications, and close with a firm recommendation. This sequence works in both interviewer-guided and candidate-led formats.

 

1. Take meticulous notes: capture the company, the context, and the objective while the interviewer reads the prompt. EY Consulting cases are especially data-heavy, so write down every number
   
   
2. Clarify the objective: ask one or two questions to confirm the goal, the timeline, and any constraints. Solving the wrong problem is the quickest way to fail a case
   
   
3. Build a structure: lay out 2 to 4 buckets that organize the problem, then walk the interviewer through them in 60 to 90 seconds
   
   
4. Work the numbers: state your approach before calculating, keep the math simple, and sanity-check the result out loud
   
   
5. Connect findings to implications: after every analysis, answer the question “so what does this mean for the client?” instead of just reporting the number
   
   
6. Deliver a firm recommendation: lead with your answer, support it with 2 to 3 reasons, and name the risks and next steps

 

Do not memorize a dozen case interview frameworks and force one onto every prompt. Build a custom structure for each case using the specific words of the objective, since canned frameworks collapse the moment a case gets unusual.

 

Your buckets also need to be MECE, meaning they cover the full problem without overlapping. Interviewers score this within the first five minutes, and a sloppy structure is hard to recover from.

 

Here is my biggest EY-specific tip, drawn from over 10 years of helping candidates land consulting offers: close every case by passing what I call the 90-Day Test. EY is a delivery firm, so end your recommendation with the two or three concrete steps the client should take in the first 90 days. Most candidates stop at the recommendation and never touch implementation, which is exactly why this move stands out.

 

What Does an EY Case Interview Example Look Like?

 

Here’s an example of a full EY-style profitability case, solved step by step. The numbers are rounded so you can follow the logic quickly.

 

Interviewer: Your client is a regional grocery chain with 200 stores and $4 billion in annual revenue. Operating profit has fallen 20% over the past two years, and the CEO wants to know why and what to do about it.

 

You (clarify): Before structuring, I’d like to confirm two things. Is the goal to restore profit to its prior level within a set timeframe, and have there been any major changes like store openings or closures? The interviewer confirms the goal is recovering profit within two years and that the store count is unchanged.

 

You (structure): Profit equals revenue minus costs, so I’d examine two buckets. On revenue, I’d look at store traffic, basket size, pricing, and product mix. On costs, I’d look at cost of goods sold, labor, rent, and shrink.

 

Interviewer: Revenue has held flat at $4 billion. Cost of goods sold rose from 70% to 71% of revenue, and operating profit fell from $200 million to $160 million.

 

You (math): One percentage point of $4 billion is $40 million, which exactly matches the $40 million profit decline. So the entire 20% drop comes from cost of goods sold, and I’d want to know whether supplier prices rose or shrink increased.

 

Interviewer: Suppliers raised prices about 3% over two years, and the client passed almost none of it through to customers.

 

You (recommendation): I recommend a two-part margin recovery plan. First, renegotiate contracts with the top 20 suppliers, which typically cover around 60% of grocery cost of goods sold. Second, pass through a 1 to 2% price increase on low-elasticity categories like staples.

 

In the first 90 days, the client should audit its top supplier contracts, pilot the price increases in 10 stores, and set a weekly margin dashboard to track recovery.

 

Notice that the math stays simple: 1% of $4 billion is $40 million. EY interviewers care far more about clean logic and a decisive close than about complex calculations.

 

What Is the EY Behavioral Interview Like?

 

Every EY interview round pairs the case with behavioral questions built around the firm’s values of integrity, teaming, and accountability. Expect 10 to 15 minutes of fit questions in the same session as your case, plus a final round that is noticeably behavioral-heavy with partners.

 

The most common EY behavioral questions include:

 

• Tell me about yourself

 

• Why EY

 

• Why consulting

 

• Tell me about a time you led a team through a challenge

 

• Describe a time you worked with a difficult stakeholder

 

• Tell me about a failure and what you learned from it

 

Build 5 to 7 stories that each cover multiple themes, and quantify the result of every story. The most common consulting behavioral questions repeat across firms, so this story bank pays off in every interview you take this season.

 

Your answer to tell me about yourself sets the tone for the entire interview. Script it, rehearse it out loud, and trim it until it runs a tight 90 seconds.

 

If fit questions are your weak spot, my fit interview course shows you how to answer 98% of them in just a few hours.

 

What Should You Expect in the EY Group Case Interview?

 

Some EY offices add a group case during final rounds or campus super days. You and 3 to 5 other candidates analyze the same case together for 20 to 30 minutes and present a joint recommendation while interviewers observe silently.

 

Group case interviews score collaboration over brilliance. Interviewers watch whether you build on others’ ideas, invite quieter members into the discussion, and move the group toward a decision without dominating.

 

Keep in mind that you are not competing against the people in your room. In my experience as an interviewer, firms regularly advance every member of a strong group and reject every member of a weak one, so making your group better is the winning strategy.

 

How Should You Prepare for the EY Case Interview?

 

Give yourself 4 to 6 weeks and roughly 50 to 60 hours of prep, split across fundamentals, drills, and live practice. The seven tips below produce the biggest score improvements I’ve seen across hundreds of coached candidates.

 

Tip #1: Learn the fundamentals before attempting full cases

 

Spend your first week on the basics: the six-step case method, structuring, and quantitative drills. Candidates who jump straight into full cases reinforce bad habits that take twice as long to unlearn.

 

If you want the fastest path, my case interview course takes you from beginner to top 10% candidate in as little as 7 days.

 

Tip #2: Drill mental math for 15 minutes a day

 

Sharpen your case interview math with short daily drills on percentages, breakevens, and big-number multiplication. Two weeks of 15 minute sessions makes calculations feel automatic, which frees your attention for the actual analysis.

 

Tip #3: Practice both case styles out loud

 

Work through 15 to 20 case interview examples spanning interviewer-guided and candidate-led formats. Practicing out loud matters because the skill being tested is communication under pressure, not silent problem solving.

 

Tip #4: Research the exact practice you applied to

 

Read two or three recent EY publications in your practice area before your interview. Referencing a real EY perspective in your case or fit answers signals genuine interest, and almost no candidate does it.

 

Tip #5: Build your fit stories in week one, not the night before

 

Behavioral answers improve with repetition just like cases do. Draft your 5 to 7 stories early, then rehearse one or two of them at the start of every practice session.

 

Tip #6: Get live reps with honest feedback

 

Do at least 10 live mock cases with a partner who will tell you the truth about your structure and presence. If you want expert feedback, my case interview coaching gives you 1-on-1 practice with a former Bain interviewer.

 

Tip #7: Close every practice case with the 90-Day Test

 

End each mock case by naming the two or three steps the client should take in the first 90 days. Make this a habit in practice and it will show up naturally on interview day, where it separates you from candidates who stop at the recommendation.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

How hard is the EY case interview?

 

EY case interviews are moderately difficult. Glassdoor users rate the EY interview process 2.9 out of 5 in difficulty, with about 74% of candidates reporting a positive experience. That makes EY easier than McKinsey, BCG, or Bain, but consulting and strategy roles still reject the large majority of applicants, so unprepared candidates rarely pass.

 

Is the EY case interview interviewer-led or candidate-led?

 

It depends on the practice. EY Consulting cases are typically interviewer-guided, with the interviewer steering you from question to question through a practical business problem. EY-Parthenon and other Strategy and Transactions cases are candidate-led, meaning you drive the structure, request the data, and propose each next step yourself.

 

How long is the EY case interview?

 

Each EY case interview lasts 30 to 45 minutes. Many interview sessions pair the case with 10 to 15 minutes of behavioral questions, so a full session often runs 45 to 60 minutes.

 

How long does the EY interview process take?

 

The full EY hiring process takes about 30 days on average, according to Glassdoor data from more than 10,000 reported interviews. Expect an online application, an online assessment for entry-level roles, and then two to three interview rounds that each combine behavioral and case interviews.

 

Do all EY consulting roles require a case interview?

 

Most client-facing EY consulting and strategy roles include at least one case interview. Some technology consulting roles substitute technical or scenario questions for a traditional case, and EY-Parthenon roles often include two or more cases plus a possible group case. Check your specific role and practice before you decide what to prepare.

 

How long should you prepare for the EY case interview?

 

Give yourself 4 to 6 weeks and roughly 50 to 60 hours of preparation. Spend the first week on fundamentals like case math and structuring, the next two to three weeks on full practice cases, and the final stretch on live mock interviews with feedback.

 

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