About

From Marc Cosentino’s Case In Point,

I had a student that had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from an Ivy League school. She had spent her time between undergrad and graduate school working for a non-profit. While at Harvard’s Kennedy School, she decided that she wanted to do consulting, but she had no business background. Her first attempt at a mock case interview with me was a disaster. That day she started a journal. For every live case she did with me, her classmates and alumni (she did around 30 live cases) and with every case that she read (about 80 cases), she wrote down the problem, the solution and most importantly what she hadn’t thought of. The student constantly reviewed it, so that what she didn’t think of naturally soon became second nature to her. She also recorded structures, concepts, ideas and strategies. When she had spare moments between classes or bus rides, she would flip through her journal. When she read articles in The Wall Street Journal, Business Week or McKinsey Quarterly, she would add to her journal. It never left her side.

She ended up at a top firm and took the journal with her. With every engagement she learned something new and added it to her journal. When she and her co-workers sat around barinstorming problems, she would flip through her journal and throw out ideas, which often sparked discussions and occasionally led to a solution.

I saw her five years after she had graduated and she still had her journal. Although it was as beaten up as Indiana Jones’s journal, it held just as many treasures. She was headed to a new job and the journal was the first thing she packed.

This woman is nothing short of brilliant, but as much as I love the heft of a physical journal in my hands, even the finest Moleskine doesn’t have a built-in Search feature.

Welcome to my journal.

With that established, I feel I should provide a disclaimer:

I am not a professional; I am a student. In my entries, I reference published sources (with citations and links if possible), but all additional comments, thoughts, and ideas (usually highlighted in blue) are those of a novice and should be treated as such.

Subsequently, my hope is that this case journal can serve as a constantly improving and expanding textbook for everyone involved. If you are a fellow student, please learn along with me! Your comments and responses are always welcome. Or, if you an individual with more experience and would like to offer suggestions, corrections, or guidance, your services would be invaluable to my experience. Thank you.