Bates White Case Interview Practice: Free Case and Prep Resources
Bates White's own interview prep is a case interview tips page and a worked example case on cellphone-battery price fixing, with a video answer for each question. Its cases run 25 to 40 minutes and are economics problems such as a merger's effect on prices, closer to an economist's exercise than McKinsey's business cases.Bates White (opens in a new tab), read ; McKinsey (opens in a new tab), read
Try a free Bates White-style case now: School Milk Merger. No card, no signup.
Free, no signup: 2 worked cases with model answers. Free, no card: your first full practice case with an AI interviewer. Paid: Pro $49/month for every case.
Updated ·By Esteban Ronsin·Founder · former Deloitte and Accenture Strategy consultant
Built and reviewed with former McKinsey, BCG and Bain consultants and interviewers.
Free Bates White interview prep resources
Bates White interview prep resources: what you get, whether it is free or paid, and the link
Resource
What you get
Free or paid
Link
Bates White case interview tips
Bates White's own page on what its case interview is, the three parts (brainstorming, calculations, conceptual discussion) and tips for each
Free. Published by Bates White, checked Nov 11, 2026
6 library cases matched to Bates White's case types, run out loud with an AI interviewer or step by step and scored on 7 skills; start with Race to the Bottom Airline Profitability
Free + paid. The case overview is public; a free account includes 1 full AI-graded case in voice or guided mode; Pro ($49/month) adds every case
Corbelworks: pricing case with answers Industry: B2B software. Difficulty: hard.1 math question.
Should a construction software company price its new scheduling app per seat, per project or in tiers, and at what price? 6 questions, 3 exhibits, a model answer for each
Free. The whole case and every model answer, no account; the practice button opens a live case like it
Northbay Grocers: competitive response case with answers Industry: Grocery retail. Difficulty: medium.1 math question.
How should a regional supermarket chain respond to a hard-discount grocer opening nearby with prices about 20% lower? 5 questions, 2 exhibits, a model answer for each
Free. The whole case and every model answer, no account; the practice button opens a live case like it
Consulting fit and behavioral questions answered out loud, with follow-up probes and structured feedback
Free + paid. 1 behavioral or Learning Mode session with a free account; Behavioral Unlimited ($39/month, behavioral and PEI only) or any Pro plan adds more
Firm-style cases are practice cases written for Road to Offer or adapted from university consulting club casebooks, not the firm's own cases. Road to Offer is independent and not affiliated with Bates White.
Try a free Bates White-style case now: no card, no signup
An original practice case written by Road to Offer in a Bates White-style format, not Bates White's own case. Everything stays in your browser.
School Milk Merger: Two dairies want to merge
Bates White's own cases are economics exercises in three parts (brainstorming, calculations, a conceptual discussion), and its tips name a merger's effect on prices as a typical question. Ours follows that order. The full library case is Gamma Airlines, a general business case about competitors' profits, the closest library practice for reading numbers; it is not a Bates White case. Bates White (opens in a new tab), read
1Step 1: Read the case
Three dairies supply milk to the school districts of one US state. The two smaller dairies announce a merger. The state attorney general hires your team to say whether the merger would raise the price the districts pay, and by how much.
2Step 2: Ask clarifying questions
Open a question to hear the interviewer's answer.
How do districts buy their milk?
Interviewer: Each district runs an annual bid. Any dairy that meets the quality rules can bid, and the district takes the lowest price.
How big is each dairy?
Interviewer: The merging dairies hold 30 and 20 percent of the state's school milk. The third dairy holds the other half.
Is one dairy's milk different from another's?
Interviewer: No. The bid specification is the same for every dairy, so districts choose on price.
Could other suppliers enter or ship in?
Interviewer: Milk can be trucked in from neighboring states, but it adds cost. No new dairy has opened in the state in ten years.
What do the dairies say?
Interviewer: They say the merger saves money, because one plant could close.
3Step 3: Structure your answer
Take two minutes. Say how you would decide whether this merger raises prices, what you would want to know first, and what you would do with a claim of cost savings.
2:00
Show what a strong structure covers
Restates the question as the effect on what districts pay, not on whether the merger helps the dairies.
Defines the market: what districts can switch to, such as milk shipped in from other states, and at what extra cost.
Counts the competitors that bid before and after the merger (three bidders become two) and the shares behind them.
Explains why losing a rival matters when districts take the lowest bid: the merged dairy no longer undercuts itself.
Looks at barriers to entry and the districts' buying power.
Tests the savings claim: is it real, specific to the merger, large enough, and passed on to districts.
Names the data to ask for: past bids, who won, each dairy's costs.
4Step 4: The interviewer's next question
Before the merger the merging dairies sell 100 units at a price of 100, and each unit costs 80 to make. After it, the combined firm could charge 105 but would lose 10 percent of its volume. Is a price rise worth it for the firm, and what does that tell you about the districts?
Show what a strong answer does
Profit before is 20 on each of 100 units, so 2,000; after it is 25 on each of 90 units, so 2,250. The rise pays, so the firm has a reason to raise price, and districts would pay 5 percent more unless the third dairy or imports hold the price down. A strong answer says the volume loss assumes districts have somewhere to go, and asks how big the cost savings would have to be to offset it.
Flour costs rose 18% on a $4M flour bill, and prices went up 3% on $20M of sales. How much margin did Harbor lose?
Your answer
Flour went up by about $720K and the price rise brings in $600K, so the net hit is roughly $100K.
What worked
Split the change into a cost side and a price side before adding them up.
Could improve
$720K minus $600K is $120K, not $100K: state the exact net before rounding.
Model answer
Flour: 18% of $4M is $720K more cost. Price: 3% of $20M is $600K more revenue. Net margin loss: $120K.
Next time, say this
Cost is up $720K and price brings back $600K, so Harbor loses $120K of margin.
3
1
Choose a case
Cases matched to Bates White's case types.
2
Solve it out loud
An AI interviewer asks, listens and follows up.
3
Get answer feedback
Feedback on every answer: what worked, what to fix.
What makes Bates White interviews different
Economics cases.
Bates White's sample questions are about bundling two medical products, a merger of two ice cream chains and a cartel overcharging for digital music players, and its example case is about price-fixing damages. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Bachelor's and master's candidates get a case interview in the first round and again in the second, alongside traditional and behavioral questions. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Bates White runs webinars that include case interview workshops and on-campus fall recruiting. The page listed no events on the day we read it. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Each arrow opens the source: Bates White, read Nov 11, 2026.
Bates White's own interview resources, item by item
Everything Bates White publishes for candidates: its case tips, its one example case question by question, and the pages that describe each track's interviews. Each line is our summary of the page itself. Read on Bates White's site .
Bates White's own interview resources, item by item: level, area and what each one is, linked to Bates White's page
A first round with a recruiter or hiring manager, then interviews with the hiring department.
Worked: Example case: cellphone batteries, in Bates White's three parts: brainstorming, calculations, conceptual discussion
A cellphone maker, TalkTek, says its battery suppliers colluded in 2019 and 2020 to raise prices, and sues for damages: the price it paid minus the price it would have paid without the alleged collusion. You get four questions over supply and demand, a price table, a cost table and the effect on customers. Read the official case (opens in a new tab)(read )
How you might work it is ours, not Bates White's answer key.
1
Brainstorming: restate and use the question's words
Say back what the claim is: an overcharge, measured against a price without collusion. Bates White's tips say to use the phrasing of the question to guide you, so for a question that asks for supply and demand factors, give both sides, and say that you are taking an economics view, not a business one.
2
Calculations: build the but-for price
The damages idea is a gap between the price paid and a price without the alleged collusion. With a price table, look at all the numbers first, say what trend the normal years show, extend it into the suspect years to get a but-for price, and write the subtraction out. Bates White's tips say to explain assumptions and double-check for misplaced zeroes.
3
Calculations: test the baseline against costs
A trend is an assumption. When the cost table shows a cost spike in the suspect years, ask whether higher costs could explain part of the price rise, and re-do the overcharge under a stated assumption about supplier profit. Say how the answer moves and why.
4
Conceptual discussion: who is really harmed
Say what the harm to consumers depends on, such as how far phone buyers respond to price, and look beyond the obvious: would other suppliers' batteries change the picture? Bates White's tips ask you to consider additional effects and to support your answer.
5
Close with the limits of your answer
End with what you assumed (a steady trend, steady profit) and what data would firm it up: more years of prices, supplier cost records. Bates White says your reasoning matters more than a correct answer, so finish on the reasoning.
Bates White's tips say to focus on how you support your answers, and its brainstorming advice says it is fine if the answer is not perfect, as long as your thought process shows. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Assumptions, explained
Bates White tells you not to hesitate to make reasonable assumptions, as long as you explain them, and to simplify the math where you can. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Each arrow opens the source: Bates White, read Nov 11, 2026.
The Bates White interview process, and what trains each step
1
Apply, and use the webinars and workshops
Bates White hosts webinars on economic consulting that include case interview workshops, plus fall on-campus recruiting with interview workshops, and accepts applications from all schools. Applications for the 2028 Summer Consultant Program open in August 2027.
For bachelor's and master's candidates, traditional interview questions and a case interview, with several people at different levels over the process.
A case of 25 to 40 minutes that simulates a real client problem, in three parts: brainstorming, calculations and a conceptual discussion. Bates White says reasoning matters more than a single correct answer.
PhD economists meet senior leaders and share job market paper insights in the first round, then give a 90-minute job market paper seminar in the second. With prior work experience the presentation may not be required.
Missing from Bates White's pages: how cases are scored, whether non-economics majors get a different case, how many interviewers sit in each round, whether any online test comes first, how long the process takes, and whether the case is interviewer-led or candidate-led.
13 Bates White-style interview questions
In our words, not Bates White's, grouped by the three parts Bates White names. They are economics-flavored where we can make them so, with what a strong answer does. Work these, then Bates White's own cellphone case in the table above.
Part 1: Brainstorming
Bates White: restate the question, ask clarifying questions and use the question's wording to guide your answer.
1Two of the three regional dairies that supply a state's school milk want to merge. Would the merger raise prices, benefit consumers, or both?
What a strong answer does: Answers each half of the question, names what decides it (how districts buy, who else could supply, whether savings reach buyers) and gives a first view with the evidence that would change it.
2A hospital supplier bundles two products and sells the pair for less than the two separately. When could that help buyers, and when could it hurt them?
What a strong answer does: Separates the cases (cheaper for buyers who wanted both, harmful if it shuts rivals out of one product), and names the evidence: the products' shares and who buys each alone.
3Three producers of a chemical were found to have met secretly in two years. What would you want to know to estimate the harm to buyers?
What a strong answer does: Asks for the price over time, costs, how much each buyer bought, and what changed in the market in those years, and says a no-collusion price is the comparison.
Bates White: talk through your setup, state reasonable assumptions, simplify, and check the zeroes.
5A buyer paid 12 a unit for 500,000 units in each of two years when the trend suggests it should have been 10. What is the overcharge, and what did you assume?
What a strong answer does: Takes the gap per unit times the units and times two years, states that the trend is the assumption, and checks the zeroes at the end.
6A firm earns a margin of 20 on a price of 100 and sells 1,000 units. It raises the price by 5 and loses 8 percent of its volume. Is that worth it?
What a strong answer does: Compares profit before and after, 20,000 against 25 times 920, finds the rise pays, and says what volume loss would make it stop paying.
7Estimate how many tons of cement a mid-sized US state uses in a year.
What a strong answer does: Builds from people or from construction, such as homes and roads built a year, states each assumption, and checks the total against a per-person sense check.
8A chart shows a supplier's price rising 8 percent in two years while its input cost rose 3 percent. What do you say first?
What a strong answer does: Reads the axes and units, says the price rose faster than cost, so margin widened, and asks which years and whether other suppliers moved too.
10If buyers pass a higher supplier price on to their own customers, who is harmed?
What a strong answer does: Distinguishes buyers who can pass costs on (and the final customers who pay) from those who cannot, and says it depends on how price-sensitive the final customers are.
11A merger is predicted to save a firm 4 percent of cost. Does that offset a 5 percent price rise?
What a strong answer does: Says savings matter only if they are passed on and could not be had without the merger, then compares the sizes before concluding.
What a strong answer does: Links something you have analyzed to the kind of matters Bates White lists (competition, damages, mass torts), and says what you want to learn, in under a minute.
Bates White's example case tells you to analyze it from an economics perspective, not a business one. A profit tree for a price-fixing question misses the point. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Rushing the table
The example case's hint says to look at all the numbers before you start and to write out even easy math, so a wrong answer is easy to trace. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Stopping after the number
Bates White's third part is a conceptual discussion of the broader concept and other effects. Say what your number assumes and who it affects. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Hiding the assumptions
Bates White says reasonable assumptions are fine if you explain them, and that reasoning matters more than a correct answer. A silent guess shows neither. Source: Bates White, read (opens in a new tab)
Each arrow opens the source: Bates White, read Nov 11, 2026.
A Bates White prep plan, day by day
The order follows Bates White's own pages; the timing is our suggestion.
Days 1 and 2
Read Bates White's tips and watch its example
Read the three parts, then answer the cellphone case's four questions yourself before opening each answer.
How do I prepare for the Bates White case interview?
Start with Bates White's own case interview tips and its example case on cellphone batteries, answering each question yourself before you open its answer. Then practice the three parts Bates White names: brainstorming, calculations and a conceptual discussion. On Road to Offer, work a free pricing or competition case out loud, add daily math reps, and prepare behavioral stories for the second round. Firm-style cases are practice cases written for Road to Offer or adapted from university consulting club casebooks, not the firm's own cases.
Where can I practice Bates White-style case interviews for free?
Bates White's own example case interview is free on its careers site, with hints, answers and a video for each question. On this page, the sample case runs in your browser with no account, and your first full case is free with a free account. Road to Offer has no cases written by Bates White; the cases linked here are general pricing, competition and number-heavy practice. Firm-style cases are practice cases written for Road to Offer or adapted from university consulting club casebooks, not the firm's own cases.
Does Bates White run case interviews, even though it is an economics firm?
Yes. Bates White's careers pages say bachelor's and master's candidates get a case interview in both rounds, to gain insight into their analytical capabilities. They are economics cases, such as a merger's effect on prices or a cartel's overcharge, not classic strategy cases like market entry or profitability.
What is the Bates White example case interview?
It is Bates White's own free practice case on its careers site: TalkTek, a cellphone maker, claims battery suppliers fixed prices in 2019 and 2020, and you estimate the damages as the gap between the price paid and the price it would have paid without the alleged collusion. It has four questions, each with a hint, a revealed answer and a video clip, plus one full walk-through video.
How long is the Bates White case interview, and what are its parts?
Bates White says its case interviews last 25 to 40 minutes and have three parts: brainstorming, where you restate the question and ask clarifying questions; calculations, where the interviewers give numbers and ask you to estimate others; and a conceptual discussion of the bigger picture.
Do I need an economics degree to interview at Bates White?
Bates White's bachelor's and master's page says no advanced degree is required and consultants can grow to Partner. It does not list required majors. Its example case is framed as an economics perspective rather than a business one, so learn the vocabulary of supply, demand, elasticity and but-for prices.
How many interview rounds does Bates White have?
Two, according to its careers pages. The first is virtual, with traditional questions and a case. The second is virtual or at its DC office, with behavioral interviews and a case. For PhD economists the second round includes a 90-minute job market paper seminar. Bates White publishes no timeline between rounds.
Is the Bates White case interview interviewer-led or candidate-led?
Bates White's pages do not say. Its three parts, a prompt and clarifying questions, numbers the interviewers provide and a discussion, read like an interviewer-led conversation, so expect to be asked a series of questions rather than to drive a structure alone.
Is the Bates White case interview scored, and how?
Bates White does not publish scoring. It says the case is meant to gain insight into your analytical capabilities, and that your reasoning matters more than a correct answer, so explain your assumptions and your calculations out loud.
Does Bates White have an online test or a written case?
Its careers pages name neither for bachelor's and master's candidates, so check your invitation for any test. The pages describe the Summer Consultant Program as teaching Stata, Excel and R on the job, so you do not need to master them before the interview.
What behavioral questions does Bates White ask?
Bates White's pages say the second round includes behavioral interviews and the first has traditional interview questions, but they publish no question list or method. Prepare short stories on analysis you have done, teamwork and why economic consulting, and practice saying them out loud.
Which Road to Offer case should I do first for Bates White?
Start with the sample case on this page, then run Gamma Airlines (reading competitors' numbers) out loud. Move to a pricing case next, since pricing and competition are the closest general topics to Bates White's merger and cartel questions.
