Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer

Last Updated: August 25, 2026

 

The UCLA Anderson casebook is a free practice case collection built by the school's Management Consulting Association, and its most widely circulated edition holds 20 full cases plus primers on 12 industries. This guide covers what sits inside each edition, which cases actually deserve your time, and how to run them so you improve instead of just collecting PDFs.

 

Before reading on:

 

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Key Takeaways

 

The UCLA Anderson casebook earns its place in your prep for math reps, exhibit practice, and raw case volume, but it should sit alongside newer material rather than serve as your only source.

You can download the casebook here: Anderson casebook.pdf

 

• The 2019 edition holds 20 cases split across five weeks and four cohorts, plus overviews of 12 industries

 

• Profitability, market entry, and investment valuation dominate the mix, so expect heavy quantitative work

 

• Every case ships with interviewer guidance, exhibits, and a sample structure, which makes partner practice simple

 

• The book was written as curriculum for Anderson's Interview Prep Team program, not as a standalone course

 

• Older editions from 2009 and 2016 still circulate, and the 2016 version repeats several cases from the newer book

 

• Nothing in the casebook covers firm specific online assessments, so budget separate prep time for those

 

What Is the UCLA Anderson Casebook?

 

The UCLA Anderson casebook is a free PDF of practice consulting cases compiled by the Anderson Management Consulting Association, the school's student run consulting club. The current edition contains 20 cases with full interviewer scripts, exhibits, and model answers, plus reference pages on 12 industries. Students use it as the case bank for the club's weekly interview prep sessions.

You can download the casebook here: Anderson casebook.pdf

 

That last point matters more than most candidates realize. This is not a book someone wrote to sell. It is the internal teaching material for a recruiting program, which is why the cases are written from the interviewer's side of the table rather than the candidate's.

 

Anderson is a genuine consulting target school, so the material reflects real recruiting pressure. According to UCLA Anderson's own career reporting, 25% of graduating full-time MBA students accepted consulting offers, with a median full-time salary of $175,000 and 87% receiving a $30,000 signing bonus. Cases built for a class placing at that rate tend to be calibrated correctly.

 

The Anderson book is one of roughly two dozen MBA consulting casebooks in wide circulation. It sits in the middle of the pack on volume and near the top on interviewer guidance quality.

 

What's Inside the UCLA Anderson Casebook?

 

The 2019 edition opens with 12 industry primers, then runs 20 cases assigned four per week over five weeks. Each week's four cases go to four separate cohorts, so a student sees one case per week as the candidate and gives one as the interviewer. Here is the full case list.

 

Week	Cases	What the week trains
Week 1	PLD China Snacks, Drug Store Profitability, Airplane De-Icing, American Beauty Company	Core profitability logic, competitive response, break even math, and open brainstorming
Week 2	Zoo Co., Town Mayor, UPS in Italy, Car Leasing Center	Net present value, public sector framing, bottleneck analysis, and market sizing
Week 3	Alpha Capital, Shermer Pharma, Thompson Healthcare, Brazil Mining	Private equity screening, market entry, cost reduction, and pricing under competition
Week 4	Engineering Co., After School Programming, Brazilian Road Concessions, Rock Energy	Merger integration, nonprofit growth strategy, investment valuation, and asset comparison
Week 5	Diabetes Testing Meter, Stew's Connections, Upscale Restaurant, High Q Plastics	New product launch, demand estimation, and profitability with a competitive overlay

 

Source: UCLA Anderson Management Consulting Association case book, 2019 edition.

 

Look at the mix and one thing jumps out. Roughly a third of the book is some form of profitability case, which mirrors what firms actually give. That is a good sign, not a weakness.

 

The other heavy categories are investment and valuation work, with four cases asking you to price an asset or compute a payback period. Two more are pure market entry cases. That leaves a thin tail of operations, growth strategy, and marketing.

 

Most cases include at least one exhibit. The Anderson book leans on scatter plots, demand curves, survey tables, and probability distributions, so you get real practice reading case interview graphs and charts rather than just doing arithmetic off a prompt.

 

Several cases also close with an explicit creativity prompt. Those are the moments to slow down and treat brainstorming in case interviews as a structured exercise instead of a list dump, since that is exactly how interviewers score it.

 

What Do the Industry Overviews Cover?

 

The 2019 edition front loads 12 industry primers before any case appears. Each one uses the same seven part layout: key ideas, revenue streams, cost drivers, customer segments, channels, risks, and key economic drivers. The industries covered are airline, automotive, commercial banking, health care, media and entertainment, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, private equity, restaurant, retail, telecom, and utilities.

 

This section is the most underrated part of the book. Most casebooks skip industry context entirely and jump straight to cases.

 

Here is why it matters. In my experience at Bain, the candidates who stalled were rarely the ones who could not do the math. They were the ones who could not name three plausible cost drivers for a client in an industry they had never worked in.

 

Read the airline primer before you run the de-icing case and you will ask sharper questions about fuel, labor, and terminal fees. Read the private equity primer before Alpha Capital and the return threshold in the prompt will actually mean something to you. Ten minutes of reading changes how the next 30 minutes go.

 

Which Edition of the UCLA Anderson Casebook Should You Use?

 

Three editions circulate widely, and they are not interchangeable. Use the 2019 edition as your primary source and pull specific pieces from the others.

 

Edition	Cases	What it adds	How to use it
2019 case book	20	12 industry primers, case type and industry labels, structured interviewer prompts, potential structure page per case	Your main source, run start to finish
2016 student case book	19	Weekly fit questions, a six category interviewer feedback form scored one to five, several cases the 2019 book drops	Steal the feedback form, run the unique cases
2009 case book	Varies by upload	Older public sector and health policy scenarios, thinner interviewer guidance, dated market figures	Optional, skim for extra math reps only

 

The overlap between 2016 and 2019 is real but partial. Drug Store Profitability, Airplane De-Icing, American Beauty Company, Town Mayor, Alpha Capital, and Diabetes Testing Meter appear in both, usually with cleaner interviewer notes in the newer version.

 

The 2016 edition holds one asset the newer book lost: a scoring form covering overall impression, logical structuring, business knowledge, quantitative work, communication, and note taking. Print it and have your partner fill it in after every case. That single page turns vague feedback into something you can track week over week.

 

That older edition also assigns a fit question to each week, moving from resume walkthroughs to failure and conflict stories to a wildcard prompt. If you want a fuller system for those answers, my fit interview course covers 98% of the questions firms ask in a few hours.

 

How Does Anderson's Interview Prep Team Program Work?

 

The casebook makes far more sense once you understand the program it was built for. Anderson students recruiting for consulting join an Interview Prep Team, or IPT, run through the Management Consulting Association alongside case marathons and career nights. Students are placed in small teams with a second year coach, and each member prepares and delivers an assigned case to the rest of the group each session.

 

Map that against the book and the structure clicks. The casebook itself assigns four cases per week to four separate cohorts across five weeks. Twenty cases total, which covers a full recruiting cycle.

 

This is the part almost no one tells you about casebooks. The pacing is deliberate. Anderson did not intend for anyone to read the book cover to cover in a weekend, and candidates who do that consistently retain less than candidates who run four cases a week for five weeks.

 

You can copy the structure without being enrolled. Find three practice partners, assign one case each per week, and rotate who plays interviewer. The MBA case interview process rewards repetition against a live human far more than it rewards reading solutions.

 

How Do You Use the UCLA Anderson Casebook Effectively?

 

Run the casebook as a five week program with a partner, never as reading material. The single biggest mistake candidates make is reading the model answer first, which feels productive and teaches nothing.

 

1. Read the industry primer first: spend ten minutes on the relevant industry page before the case starts
   
   
2. Have your partner give the case live: they hold the interviewer guidance and release data only when you ask for it
   
   
3. Work the case cold and out loud: no pausing, no looking ahead, and no restarting when you get stuck
   
   
4. Deliver a recommendation under 60 seconds: the Anderson interviewer notes repeatedly ask for a crisp close
   
   
5. Score the case on the six category form: have your partner rate you before either of you discusses the answer
   
   
6. Only then read the solution: compare your structure against the potential structure page and note what you missed

 

Step four deserves emphasis because the Anderson book is unusually strict about it. Multiple cases instruct the interviewer to ask for a wrap up in under a minute, and the evaluation notes reward candidates who tie earlier calculations into the close. Practice your case interview recommendation as a separate drill if yours runs long.

 

If you are working through the book solo, adapt rather than skip. Read the prompt, set a timer, write your structure on paper, then check it against the sample structure before touching any exhibit. My guide on how to practice case interviews by yourself covers the drills that survive without a partner.

 

Speed matters more than most candidates expect. If you need a faster on ramp before you start running full cases, my case interview course gets you to a top 10% level in about seven days.

 

Which UCLA Anderson Cases Should You Practice First?

 

Start with the cases that carry the heaviest quantitative load, because that is where candidates lose offers. If you only have time for six, run these.

 

• Zoo Co.: the cleanest net present value and breakeven sequence in the book, with a genuine sensitivity discussion

 

• PLD China Snacks: teaches the distinction between losing volume and losing share, which trips up strong candidates

 

• Brazilian Road Concessions: a side by side comparison of building versus buying, with payback and return calculations

 

• Thompson Healthcare: written in a command and control style, so it drills you on abrupt topic changes

 

• UPS in Italy: a bottleneck problem where the constraint is time rather than capacity, which most candidates miss

 

• Car Leasing Center: a layered sizing chain that runs from population all the way to headcount

 

Car Leasing Center is the one I would hand every candidate. It chains four separate estimates together, and each error compounds into the next, which is exactly what makes market sizing questions dangerous under time pressure.

 

Save American Beauty Company and After School Programming for later in your prep. Both are strong cases, but they reward judgment and structure over calculation, and that skill develops after the quantitative fundamentals are solid.

 

What Are the Limitations of the UCLA Anderson Casebook?

 

The casebook has three real gaps, and knowing them protects you from over relying on it. None of them make the book unusable, but each one needs a separate fix.

 

The cases predate current firm screening tools

 

Nothing in the book prepares you for the digital assessments firms now use before a human ever sees you. The McKinsey Solve assessment tests ecosystem building and data analysis in a game format that shares almost nothing with a written case.

 

The same applies to BCG Casey, which runs as a timed chatbot conversation. Budget separate preparation time for whichever screen your target firm uses.

 

Sample structures invite memorization

 

Almost every Anderson case ends with a potential structure page. That is genuinely useful for checking your work and genuinely dangerous if you start treating those pages as templates to reuse.

 

Interviewers spot a recycled structure instantly, and it reads as preparation rather than thinking. Build your own case interview frameworks from the prompt each time, then compare against the book afterward.

 

Market figures inside the cases are stale

 

Several cases reference market sizes, housing starts, and commodity prices from a decade or more ago. This does not affect the analytical skill you are practicing, since the math works the same regardless.

 

It does mean you should not carry any number from the casebook into a real interview as a fact. Treat every figure as a training input, not as business knowledge.

 

Tips for Getting More Out of the UCLA Anderson Casebook

 

Tip #1: Give more cases than you receive

 

The Anderson interviewer guidance is detailed enough that reading it teaches you how evaluation actually works. You will see exactly which behaviors get labeled expected, good, and excellent.

 

Candidates who interview others improve faster than candidates who only sit in the hot seat. Aim to give at least as many cases as you take.

 

Tip #2: Time your math separately

 

Pull the calculations out of five Anderson cases and run them as standalone drills. The payback period, breakeven, and market share computations are the exact arithmetic you will face live.

 

Doing them cold, without case context, exposes weak spots that a full case can hide. Strong case interview math is the cheapest score improvement available to most candidates.

 

Tip #3: Write down what the interviewer withheld

 

Anderson cases explicitly gate information behind candidate questions. After each case, list every piece of data you never asked for.

 

That list is a direct map of your questioning blind spots. Most candidates find the same gaps repeating across cases, which makes them easy to fix.

 

Tip #4: Mix in casebooks from other schools

 

Every club writes cases in a house style, and running 20 from one source teaches you that source's habits rather than general problem solving. Rotate in a different book every week or two.

 

The Kellogg casebook makes a good counterweight because its cases lean more conversational and less exhibit driven than Anderson's.

 

Tip #5: Get one round of real feedback

 

Peer feedback plateaus. Practice partners at your own level will keep flagging the same surface issues and miss the structural habits that actually cost you offers.

 

Once you have run 15 or so cases, one session with someone who has interviewed candidates professionally will tell you more than the next ten peer sessions. My interview coaching gives you that read from a former Bain interviewer.

 

The UCLA Anderson casebook is one of the better free resources available, and 20 well written cases with exhibits and interviewer scripts will move you forward if you run them properly. Treat it as a five week program with a partner, not a document to read, and pair it with cases from other sources so you learn problem solving instead of one club's writing style. Start with Zoo Co. this week and get a real person on the other side of the table.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Is the UCLA Anderson casebook free?

 

Yes. The Anderson Management Consulting Association produces the casebook for its own members and does not sell it. You can download the casebook here: Anderson casebook.pdf

 

How many cases are in the UCLA Anderson casebook?

 

The most recent widely circulated edition contains 20 full cases, organized as four cases per week across a five week schedule. The 2016 edition contains 19 cases on the same weekly structure. Both editions include interviewer guidance, exhibits, and a sample structure for every case.

 

Is the UCLA Anderson casebook good for McKinsey, BCG, and Bain interviews?

 

It is useful for building volume, math speed, and exhibit reading, but it is not sufficient on its own. Several cases are explicitly written to mirror a McKinsey or BCG interviewer style, which helps. The cases predate the current round of firm specific online assessments, so you need separate preparation for those screens.

 

What is the difference between the UCLA Anderson casebook editions?

 

The 2019 edition is the most polished. It adds 12 industry overviews, labels each case by type and industry, and gives interviewers structured prompts. The 2016 edition has weekly fit questions and a six part feedback form that the newer edition drops. The 2009 edition is thinner and repeats less useful material, so treat it as optional.

 

Do you need to be a UCLA Anderson student to use the casebook?

 

No. The casebook was written for Anderson students preparing through the club's Interview Prep Team program, but nothing in it is restricted to enrolled students. Undergraduates, experienced hires, and candidates at other schools can run the same cases with a practice partner. You will just be missing the coaching layer that Anderson students get alongside the book.

 

How many casebook cases should you do before a consulting interview?

 

Most candidates who receive offers have run 30 to 50 live cases with a partner. The Anderson casebook can supply roughly 20 of those, which makes it a strong middle block rather than a complete plan. Pair it with cases from at least two other sources so you are not pattern matching to one club's writing style.

 

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