Charles River Associates Case Interview: Rounds, Economic Cases, and Prep Guide (2026)

Charles River Associates candidates should prepare for more than behavioral screens. The process usually runs two rounds of guided economics exercises that test your ability to apply microeconomic reasoning to competition, financial, or practice-specific disputes. If you have prepared exclusively for strategy consulting cases, you need a targeted recalibration for CRA. Here is the complete picture.

What CRA Actually Does

CRA's work divides into three main practice areas:

Any case or technical exercise you receive is likely to reflect the practice you are interviewing for. Tailor your prep to that practice, especially if you are targeting life sciences consulting, and ask your recruiter what to expect.

What Does The CRA Interview Process Look Like?

Across candidate reports and third-party guides, CRA's process for analyst and associate roles typically follows two rounds after the resume and cover letter screen. Formats vary by office, practice, and role, so treat this as the common shape, not a guarantee, and confirm with your recruiter.

Round 1: Two Interviews

The first round is usually two interviews, often virtual, each combining behavioral questions with a short guided economic case or technical discussion. Some roles also include a separate numerical reasoning assessment or a short critical-thinking task at this stage.

Behavioral segment:

• Walk me through your resume and your most analytical project
• Why economic consulting rather than strategy consulting or banking?
• Why CRA specifically, and why this practice?
• Tell me about a time you worked with a large or messy dataset

CRA states publicly that there are no gotcha questions, that is not the culture. Many senior staff hold PhDs in economics or statistics, so they probe for intellectual curiosity and depth rather than trick puzzles. Come prepared to talk about your research, a lot.

Case or technical segment: A short economic case or technical exercise appears here. These are usually guided, the interviewer presents a scenario and walks you through specific questions, and you reason through each one out loud.

Final Round: Three To Five Interviews

The final round is commonly three to five interviews with more senior consultants, going deeper than round one. Depending on the office and practice, it can also include:

• A group case interview where you collaborate with other candidates on a shared problem, used to assess teamwork and how you handle disagreement
• A writing sample or critical-thinking task based on a brief article, data table, or short report
• Behavioral interviews with consultants at different levels
• Informal conversations with analysts or associates to assess fit

In the group case, partners watch whether you build on others' points and push the analysis forward, not whether you dominate the room. Contributing one sharp, well-reasoned insight and crediting a teammate reads better than talking the most.

What Do CRA Case Interviews Actually Look Like?

The Guided Case Format

Unlike McKinsey or BCG where you structure the entire problem yourself, CRA cases are interviewer-led with specific questions:

"We're going to discuss a competition case. Our client is a pharmaceutical company facing an antitrust investigation. Question 1: How would you define the relevant market for this drug? Question 2: Given these market share figures (interviewer provides data), is this market concentrated? Question 3: What data would you need to estimate the price effect of the alleged anticompetitive conduct?"

You respond to each question with clear, structured economic reasoning.

Sample CRA Case: Airline Merger Analysis

Background: Two regional airlines want to merge. CRA has been hired by one airline's legal team to prepare an analysis for the DOJ merger review.

To build the market-definition and competitive-dynamics muscle this case rewards, work a full candidate-led case where you size a market and reason about entrants and rivals before the airline questions below.

Q1: How do you define the relevant market?

Strong answer: The relevant market has both a product dimension and a geographic dimension. The product market is commercial air travel; we'd need to assess whether other modes of transport (rail, driving) are substitutes on these routes. The geographic market is likely route-specific: each city-pair is potentially its own market because passengers on a Boston–New York route aren't substitutes for passengers on a Boston–Chicago route.

Q2: Interviewer provides: Route A has HHI of 2,800 pre-merger; merger would increase HHI by 400 points. How do you interpret this?

Strong answer: First, the level. Under the 2023 Merger Guidelines, a market with HHI above 1,800 is highly concentrated, so at 2,800 this route is well past that line. Second, the change. The Guidelines treat an HHI increase of more than 100 points in a highly concentrated market as a significant increase that triggers a structural presumption of harm. A 400-point increase is four times that threshold, so this merger carries a strong presumption of competitive harm. In practice that means likely DOJ scrutiny and a need for either divestiture remedies or a well-supported efficiency defense.

Show your work on the HHI itself if the interviewer hands you shares. HHI is the sum of squared market shares in percentage points. If two merging carriers on Route A hold 30% and 20%, their combined contribution rises from 30 squared plus 20 squared, that is 900 plus 400 equals 1,300, to a single 50% firm contributing 50 squared, that is 2,500. The increase is 2,500 minus 1,300, which equals 1,200 points. The clean shortcut for a two-firm merger is twice the product of the two shares, here 2 times 30 times 20 equals 1,200, the same answer without squaring anything. That single arithmetic move is what separates candidates who memorized a threshold from candidates who understand the mechanic.

Q3: What data would you need to estimate the price effect of the merger?

Strong answer: Four key data requirements:

1. Historical route-level pricing data (fare by route, before/after comparable mergers)
2. Demand elasticity estimates (how sensitive passengers are to price changes)
3. Diversion ratios (what % of passengers on merged routes would switch to each other's flights vs. driving/rail)
4. Cost data (to evaluate efficiency claims)

The HHI math and elasticity calculations in these questions are where CRA candidates win or lose. Run a quant drill on reading concentration figures, percentage changes, and exhibit data under time pressure.

How Do You Solve A Guided CRA Case?

Even though the interviewer drives the questions, a repeatable approach keeps your answers tight. A practical loop for each sub-question:

1. Restate the question and the goal. Confirm what the interviewer is actually asking before you answer, for example, "So we want to know whether this route is concentrated enough to flag for the DOJ."
2. Name the economic concept in one line. Market definition, HHI, elasticity, diversion. Labeling the tool signals you know the vocabulary.
3. Do the arithmetic out loud, slowly. Sense-check the order of magnitude before you commit. Economic consulting work gets attacked by opposing experts, so a defensible, shown calculation beats a fast guess.
4. State the implication, not just the number. A 400-point HHI increase is a fact, "that triggers a structural presumption of harm" is the answer.
5. Flag one limitation or next data request. "I would want diversion ratios before I commit" mirrors how real CRA engagements pressure-test findings.

The arithmetic in step three is where most candidates slip. Drill consulting math formulas and mental math for case interviews until squaring shares, computing percentage changes, and reading exhibit tables under time pressure feels automatic.

What Are The Most Common CRA Case Mistakes?

• Reciting strategy frameworks. Opening a competition case with a profitability or 4Ps framework signals you have not recalibrated for economic consulting. Start from the economic question.
• Using stale thresholds. Citing the old 2,500 HHI and 200-point figures dates your prep. The 2023 Merger Guidelines moved these to 1,800 and 100 points.
• Skipping the arithmetic. Asserting "this market is concentrated" without computing or interpreting the HHI is the fastest way to lose a quant-led interviewer.
• Answering only the number. Ending at "HHI rose 400 points" without the so-what leaves the analysis half-finished.
• Overclaiming. CRA work is adversarial. Hedging appropriately and naming the data you would still want reads as maturity, not weakness.

What Economics Knowledge Should You Prepare?

If you studied economics at the undergraduate or graduate level, most of this is review. If you're coming from finance or engineering, focus on the competition economics concepts, which show up in nearly every CRA case.

CRA's own careers team is explicit that every application and interview must answer two questions cleanly: why economic consulting specifically, and what in your background proves you can do it well. Generic cover letters recycled from banking or strategy applications are a red flag. Tie a real story, a thesis, an econometrics project, a dataset you cleaned in Stata or R, to the kind of evidence-based work CRA does, and you separate yourself from candidates who only list coursework. If you are switching fields into economic consulting, our case interview prep for career changers guide covers how to frame a non-traditional background.

CRA vs. Analysis Group: Key Differences

See our Analysis Group case interview guide for the AG-specific approach.

How Do You Prepare For The CRA Writing Sample?

Some CRA final rounds include a written case or writing sample. You may be given a brief document (news article, data table, or short report) and asked to summarize the key findings or provide a short analysis.

Tips:

• Lead with the headline finding, not context
• Use numbers precisely: don't say "revenues increased"; say "revenues increased 23% in Q3 2025"
• Be concise: 3–5 sentences is usually appropriate
• Identify 1–2 limitations or caveats in the data

This is directly analogous to what CRA consultants do when summarizing expert report findings for lawyers who need concise technical takeaways.

What Is A Focused CRA Prep Plan?

Checklist

Execution checklist

• Review microeconomics: market definition, HHI, elasticity, Nash equilibrium

  CRA case questions directly test these concepts; vocabulary matters

• Prepare 3 analytical research stories (STAR format with technical depth)

  Behavioral interviews focus heavily on your quantitative and analytical experience

• Practice explaining technical concepts in plain language

  CRA consultants regularly explain economic findings to lawyers and executives who aren't economists

• Read 2-3 CRA published economic analyses

  Understanding what CRA's output looks like helps you speak specifically about why you want to work there

• Prepare a specific 'why CRA' answer mentioning the practice area you're targeting

  CRA assigns you to a practice on day one; they want to know you understand and want their specific type of work

• Practice the writing sample format: headline finding, specific data, concise 5-sentence summary

  If your process includes a writing sample, concise synthesis matters more than long background context

Connect to Broader Case Prep

While CRA cases differ from strategy consulting, core intellectual skills still apply:

• MECE principle for structuring economic arguments
• Issue tree case interview for decomposing competition problems
• Case interview communication tips for delivering economic reasoning clearly
• Behavioral interview consulting for the substantial behavioral component
• NERA Economic Consulting case interview guide: closest peer firm in antitrust and damages work
• Compass Lexecon case interview guide: the leading antitrust specialist with overlapping case types
• Cornerstone Research case interview guide: securities litigation peer with a similar academic-practitioner model
• Where economic consultancies like CRA fit among the main types of consulting firms: see how competition economics sits next to strategy, operations, and Big 4

Sources and Further Reading (checked June 18, 2026)

• CRA Official Careers, How to approach interviewing at CRA: crai.com/careers/blogs/how-approach-interviewing-cra
• CRA Official, Insight into CRA's analyst application process: crai.com/careers/blogs/insight-cras-analyst-application-process
• Hacking the Case Interview, CRA Guide: hackingthecaseinterview.com/pages/charles-river-associates-case-interview
• CaseBasix, CRA Case Interview: casebasix.com/pages/charles-river-associates-case-interview
• US DOJ and FTC, 2023 Merger Guidelines (HHI thresholds): ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2023_merger_guidelines_final_12.18.2023.pdf
• Wall Street Oasis, CRA Interview Reports: wallstreetoasis.com/company/charles-river-associates/interview