Consulting assessment glossary

McKinsey Solve is the gamified online assessment McKinsey uses to screen most consulting applicants before interviews. It puts you in a simulated natural environment and asks you to make decisions with data. Candidates report that most invitations run 65 minutes (Redrock Study and Sea Wolf) or 85 minutes (adding the Sustainable Futures Lab); your invitation email states the length. Solve is reported to score both your answers and the way you reach them.

Redrock (the Redrock Study) is a timed research case inside McKinsey Solve. You play a researcher analyzing fictional wildlife data and move through a fixed sequence of phases: investigation (collecting the relevant data), analysis (calculations) and a partly written report, followed by a set of standalone mini-cases on related themes. It tests how quickly you find the numbers a question needs and calculate with them.

The Ecosystem Simulation, also called Ecosystem Building, is a legacy McKinsey Solve game in which you build a food chain of species that can survive in a chosen location. Candidates report it has been phased out in most locations in favor of Redrock and Sea Wolf, though it may still appear on some longer invitations.

Sea Wolf, also called the Ocean Cleanup game, is a McKinsey Solve game in which you treat contaminated ocean sites with microbes. At each site you build a pool of candidate microbes and choose three. The key rule, as candidates describe it, is that the average of each attribute across your three microbes must fall inside the site's target range, while meeting the site's trait conditions.

The Sustainable Futures Lab is the newest McKinsey Solve module and appears only on longer invitations. Unlike Redrock and Sea Wolf, it is closer to a situational-judgment test: you run a sustainability project and make calls about priorities, trade-offs and your team.

PSG, the Problem Solving Game, is McKinsey's earlier name for the assessment now called McKinsey Solve. Candidates and prep sites still use PSG, the Imbellus test or the McKinsey Digital Assessment for the same test.

BCG Casey is the chatbot-led online case that BCG calls the Online Case Experience. BCG says it takes about 30 minutes, in English. Candidates report one business case with 8 to 10 questions, starting with dataset selection, answers that are final once submitted, a calculator allowed, and a 60-second recorded video recommendation at the end.

BCG Online Case, or the Online Case Experience, is BCG's own name for the assessment candidates call Casey. When recruiters mention the BCG online case, they mean the same chatbot-led case.

The BCG Case Completion Assessment (CCA) is a written format in which you complete a partly finished case analysis. Candidates report Casey is more widely used, but BCG does not publish which offices use which format, and assignments can change between cycles.

A data exhibit is a chart, table or graph presented during a case or an online assessment. Exhibits are central to BCG Casey and McKinsey Solve, where you must pull the right number out of a visual under time pressure. Common types include stacked bar charts, waterfall charts, scatter plots and multi-row tables.

Bain SOVA refers to the Sova assessment, one of the two platforms Bain uses for its online test (the other is TestGorilla). Bain puts the test at about 30 to 40 minutes and allows pen, paper and a calculator. Sova mixes reasoning, situational-judgment and personality items with no per-question countdown, though prep sites report that completion time is recorded.

Verbal reasoning items in Sova-style tests give you a short passage and ask what follows from it: whether a statement is true, false or cannot be determined from the text alone. The skill is separating what the passage states from what it merely suggests.

Numerical reasoning items ask you to interpret charts and tables and calculate percentages, ratios, averages and growth rates. Bain allows a calculator for its online test, so the difficulty is finding the right data quickly and choosing the right operation.

Deductive reasoning items give you premises and ask which conclusion must follow from them. They test formal logic, such as syllogisms and conditional statements, and reward reading exactly what is given rather than what seems likely.

Inductive reasoning items show a series of shapes or symbols and ask you to find the rule and pick what comes next. No math or vocabulary is needed; the test is how quickly you spot a pattern.

Pymetrics is a behavioral-games assessment platform used by some employers for early screening. Its short games measure traits such as attention, risk tolerance and effort, and it has no right or wrong answers: it builds a profile and compares it with a benchmark. Bain states its own online test is Sova or TestGorilla.