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November 5, 2026
McKinsey Assessment Test:
The Ultimate 2026 Guide
The last updates on the McKinsey Solve Game test
I’m here to help you understand something that might seem really confusing at first: the McKinsey assessment test.
Think of it like a video game that McKinsey uses to find the smartest problem-solvers, and I’m going to walk you through exactly what it is and how it works. If you’ve ever wondered what happens after you apply to McKinsey, you’re about to find out how to approach the game McKinsey is using in this 2026 guide.
The McKinsey assessment test, also known as the McKinsey Solve game or McKinsey Problem Solving Test, is basically McKinsey’s way of checking if you can think like a real consultant before they spend time interviewing you. I think of it as the gatekeeper that decides whether you get to meet with McKinsey people face-to-face. It’s not like a normal verbal reasoning test you might take in school with simple right or wrong answers.
You will have to take the assessment whenever you apply if you haven’t taken it in the last 12 months.
Do You Want To Play The McKinsey Solve Game In Advance?
Have a look at the McKinsey Solve simulation I created, including constant updates to the very last version of the game and essential tips to excel in every part of the game. You will have lifetime access to the simulation, so that you can practice without constraints.
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🔽 NEXT: The most up-to-date overview of the McKinsey assessment for 2026 & the skills tested in the game (Part 1 of 2) 👇
What Exactly Is the McKinsey Assessment Test?
The McKinsey assessment test is an online game that takes 95 minutes to complete, and it’s pretty different from anything you’ve probably done before. Instead of sitting down with pencil and paper and trying to solve business problems, you’re playing an interactive computer game that’s designed to test how your brain works.
The simulation game was created by a company called Imbellus, specifically to determine whether candidates think the way McKinsey consultants do. For this reason, it is quite different from traditional numerical reasoning tests and requires a mix of quantitative analysis and data interpretation skills.
McKinsey officially says you don’t need to prepare for this test, but almost everyone who actually takes it would tell you that’s not completely true. The test has changed a lot over the years, and right now, it’s much different from how it was before.
The current version focuses on up to three main games: the Redrock Study game, the Sea Wolf game, and the Sustainable Futures Lab game, and each one tests different skills that consultants actually use every day and that are considered key for the McKinsey recruitment process.
The Redrock Study is like being a scientist who has to analyze tons of information to answer important questions. You get a bunch of data about a natural environment, and your job is to read through it, pick out the important bits, and then answer questions about what you found. It’s kind of like when you read a long article for homework and then have to write down the main ideas and solve math problems related to it.
The Sea Wolf game is totally different—your job is to pick microbes to clean up a pretend ocean, and you have to make sure the microbes you choose can actually survive in the water conditions you’re given.
Finally, the McKinsey Sustainable Futures Lab, added in 2026, is closer to a behavioural test and requires you to answer questions to understand your interpersonal skills.
Many candidates find this test quite hard. It is estimated that about 70% of people who take the McKinsey Solve game don’t pass it, based on unofficial statistics.
I know that sounds scary, but the good news is that if you understand what they’re looking for and you practice the right way, you can definitely improve your chances. I have learned that preparation makes a huge difference, and in this article I will share a few tips on how to do well on this test.
How the McKinsey Problem Solving Game Works
Let me break down exactly what happens when you actually sit down to take the McKinsey Solve assessment test. First, you’ll get an invitation to play the game via an email with a link, and you have about one week from when you get that email to complete the test from home. You do it on your computer, which means you can pick whatever time works best for you, which is actually nice.
When you start the test via your McKinsey Solve invitation link, you won’t jump right into the games because there’s an untimed tutorial first. This tutorial part is really important, and I can’t stress this enough—you should use this time to really understand what the game is asking you to do. You can take as much time as you want on the tutorial, so read everything carefully and don’t just rush through it. The timer only starts when the actual game begins, so make the most of this free time to get comfortable with what’s about to happen.
The Redrock Study comes first and lasts about 35 minutes, and honestly, this is where a lot of people either really succeed or really struggle. In this game, you’re given a research objective, and then you get a big article with lots of information, tables, and charts, which is used by McKinsey to understand your data analysis skills.
Your first job is to go through all that information and pick out the relevant data to answer the research question and add them to your digital journal as your supporting evidence. McKinsey calls this the “investigation phase”.
After you’ve gathered your information, you move to the “analysis phase” where you actually have to answer different question types and do some math using an on-screen calculator. Then comes the “report phase” where you write up what you found and pick the best chart to show your results.
Finally, there are six mini cases that are kind of like individual math questions where you get a short scenario and have to answer questions about it very quickly (check out our free course about the Redrock cases here). All of this has to happen in 35 minutes, which is definitely tight, so you really need to manage your time when you are playing the game.
The Sea Wolf game, also called McKinsey Ocean Treatment, comes after Redrock and you get about 30 minutes for it. In this game, you’re managing an ocean cleanup operation, and you have to pick the right microbes for three different contaminated sites, based on some environmental characteristics.
Each site has different conditions—different temperatures, different depths, different types of pollution—and you have to figure out which microbes will work best in each place. This game is testing your ability to make decisions when there’s no perfect answer, which is exactly what consultants do all the time in real life.
The Sustainable Futures Lab game is the last addition to the test. It takes exactly 30 minutes and will present you with a prompt related to a natural theme ranging from pollution to climate change. You will need to answer questions related to this theme in a team setting, which aim to assess how you react within a team under pressure or with uncertainty, almost like an aptitude test.
In the past, the game also included the McKinsey Ecosystem game, which required you to build a food chain in a coral reef or mountain ridge, the Disease Management game, where you had to investigate a disease affecting animals, and the Plant Defense game, where you had to protect a plant from invasive species. These games are no longer present.
This free McKinsey Solve game guide presents an overview of all the games, their timelines, and the game mechanics.
The whole thing takes about 85 minutes from start to finish, and a lot of candidates say the time pressure is the hardest part. You can’t pause the game once it starts, but you can take a quick break between the games if you need one, as you might feel quite drained after the first game.
I recommend having water and snacks nearby, wearing comfortable clothes, and making sure your internet connection is stable before you even start. You also have to be alone in a quiet space.
The Five Skills McKinsey Is Really Testing
The McKinsey assessment game isn’t really testing what you know about business or consulting. Unlike the old McKinsey PST, you won’t need to answer business-related questions. The McKinsey problem solving game tests how you think and how you handle problems you’ve never seen before.
There are five specific thinking skills that the gamified assessment evaluates as part of your problem-solving skills, and I have listed them below.
The first skill is critical thinking, which basically means your ability to look at information and make smart decisions based on facts instead of just guessing. When you take the McKinsey problem solving game, you need to really understand what information matters and what’s just noise trying to confuse you.
McKinsey wants to see that you can question things and think deeply instead of just taking the first answer that comes to your head. If there’s a chart that doesn’t match what the article says, a great critical thinker would catch that and wonder why.
The second skill is decision-making under pressure with limited information, which is way harder than it sounds. In the real world, consultants don’t always have all the information they want before they have to make a decision, so McKinsey wants to see that you can take action even when things are uncertain.
During the McKinsey PSG test, you’ll sometimes feel like you don’t have enough data or enough time to figure out the perfect answer, and that’s on purpose. McKinsey wants to see that you’ll make your best guess and keep moving instead of freezing up and wasting time.
The third skill is called metacognition, which is just a fancy word for “thinking about your own thinking.” This means you’re aware of your own thinking process and you can adjust your strategy when you need to. I like to think of it as the ability to step back and ask yourself whether your approach is actually working or if you need to try something different.
The McKinsey test actually tracks how you’re solving problems, not just whether you get the right answer, because they want to see that you think logically and can adapt.
The fourth skill is situational awareness, which means you can see what’s going on in a complicated situation and figure out what it all means.
In the games, there are lots of things happening at the same time, and you need to keep track of how everything connects. If you change one thing in the ecosystem, it affects other things, and a consultant with good situational awareness will see how everything fits together.
The fifth and final skill is systems thinking, which is the ability to understand how cause and effect work in complicated situations. When you choose a microbe in the Sea Wolf Ocean Treatment game, that choice affects the other microbes you pick, and you have to see all these connections.
Systems thinking is what helps you make decisions that work out in the long term instead of just making quick fixes that create new problems later. I think of it like being a coach who has to understand how the position of a player affects the whole team’s performance.
Although none of the games in the McKinsey Imbellus assessment are strictly strategy games, altogether they will help McKinsey to understand if you have the required structured problem-solving skills, logical reasoning, and cognitive ability needed to perform well as a consultant.
Do You Want To Be Ready For The McKinsey Solve Game?
Have a look at my McKinsey PSG video simulation, where I go through each step and share the tips and strategies to beat the Solve game.
There is also an optional full playable simulation of the game available as an add-on if you want to bring your prep to the next level by practicing on the game before test day.
Furthermore, this is the ONLY McKinsey Solve game simulation on the market with a 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee!
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🔽 NEXT: Learn more about how scoring actually works, what to do to pass this test & find answers to the most common questions asked regarding the Solve game (Part 2 of 2) 👇
How Scoring Actually Works on the McKinsey Solve Test
The scoring for the McKinsey Solve assessment is interesting: it is measured in deciles, from 1 to 10, and you can receive your score decile if you request it from HR. To be confident you did well in the test, you should aim for a decile of 8 or higher.
What’s actually happening behind the scenes is that McKinsey is looking at two different types of scores: your product score and your process score.
The product score measures whether you actually accomplished what the game asked you to do. In Redrock, did you pick the right data and answer the questions correctly? In Sea Wolf, did you pick microbes that actually work together? This is like grading what you produced.
The process score, on the other hand, measures how you got there—did you have a logical strategy, did you test your ideas before making final decisions, did you make smart observations?
McKinsey looks at both of these scores together and compares your performance to everyone else who’s taken the test. They basically put all the candidates into 10 groups called deciles, which is just a way of sorting people into the bottom ten percent, the next ten percent, and so on, until the top ten percent.
If you’re in the top groups—decile 8 or higher—you’re very likely to be invited to interview with the Firm. If you score below that, you probably won’t get an interview, unless something really impressive about your background makes them want to give you a second look.
The test is definitely not easy, given that, based on unofficial rumors, about 70% of people who take the McKinsey assessment test don’t pass, which means only a minority actually move on to interviews. Some sources say it’s even lower than that.
That’s a really tough number, but here’s the thing—it doesn’t mean the test is impossible. It means that the test is working exactly the way McKinsey designed it to work: it’s filtering out candidates who aren’t ready to be consultants. If you prepare well, you can absolutely be in that top thirty percent.
One thing useful to know is that the test is not just about getting the right answer on every single question. McKinsey is also looking at whether you’re thinking like a consultant. That means they want to see that you have a strategy before you start acting, that you’re testing your ideas before you commit to them, and that you’re thinking about the bigger picture instead of just focusing on tiny details. Even if you don’t get every single question right, you can pass if your overall approach looks like something a great consultant would do.
What To Do To Actually Pass This Test
McKinsey says you don’t need to prepare for McKinsey Solve, and technically that’s true—you could just show up without any prep and take the test. But that would be like saying you could run a marathon without training: technically possible, but really, really unlikely to go well.
At PSG Secrets, we spent several months crafting the perfect course material for the test, and I genuinely think that it is the key reason why our candidates have a high success rate with the test (89% at the moment—we know the exact number because we refund the candidates who don’t pass due to the test).
The first thing you should do is look at the free Redrock case course that we provide for free on our site. Redrock is the most difficult section of the game for most candidates, and good preparation is key to performing well on the test. Then you should practice with actual simulations of the new format if you can find them, because the real test is pretty different from the old Problem Solving Test.
When you start your practice test, here’s what I recommend: if possible, do full practice runs where you do the entire 85-minute test in one sitting, just like you’ll do on test day. I see many people who practice individual questions or short sections, and then when they take the real test, they run out of energy or time. You need to get used to working hard for 85 minutes straight while staying focused. You should also try to recreate test conditions—find a quiet room, turn off your phone, and sit at a computer just like you’ll do on the real day.
Get really comfortable with percentages, fractions, and ratios because those come up a lot in the Redrock game. You don’t need to be a math genius or to be incredibly fast with your mental math, but you need to be quick and accurate. In our free course, you can find some examples of the questions asked during the game.
Another thing that helps many candidates is learning how to organize information quickly. Have pen and paper or, even better, an Excel solver ready for Sea Wolf, as that game requires calculations that cannot be performed within the game interface. Don’t try to remember everything in your head—write it down. Use simple systems like underlining key numbers or putting important information in boxes so you can find it fast when you need it.
Practice identifying what information actually matters and what’s just distraction, because the games throw a LOT of information at you. Learn to ask yourself questions like “Is this information actually relevant to what I’m trying to figure out?” Practice making decisions quickly when you don’t have perfect information. In the real test, you sometimes just have to make your best guess and keep moving.
Finally, and this is so important, get comfortable with not getting every single question perfect. I think a lot of people fail because they get so stressed about getting one answer wrong that they panic and stop thinking clearly.
Remember that the test is designed so that most people won’t get everything right. If you get 70% to 80% of the questions right and your thinking process looks good, you have a very solid chance of passing. Focus on doing well overall instead of trying to be perfect.
Frequently Asked Questions About the McKinsey Assessment Test
1. Can I fail the McKinsey assessment test?
Yes, you can absolutely fail it, and most people actually do. About 70% of candidates don’t pass based on unofficial rumors, so failure is pretty normal. The good news is that if you prepare well, study the right things, and practice beforehand, you can definitely be in the group who pass. Also, if you don’t pass, you can apply again after 12 months, so one failure isn’t the end of your consulting journey.
2. How long does it take to get my assessment results?
You will usually hear back within one to three weeks after you finish taking the Imbellus test. If you ask for it, they will also give you the score decile of your test. I know the waiting is tough, so I recommend using that time to prepare for case interviews or improve other parts of your application, because you can’t do anything about your test score once it’s submitted.
3. Do I need to study and prepare for this test?
Even though McKinsey says you don’t need to prepare, I think that’s kind of misleading. You’re competing against thousands of other McKinsey candidates who are taking the same test, and most of them are preparing. You need to practice the actual McKinsey Solve game scenarios, get faster at math, and practice making quick decisions under time pressure.
4. What happens if I don't pass McKinsey Solve?
If you don’t pass, you won’t get an interview this year. However, the test score will be valid for only 12 months, so one failure doesn’t mean you can never be a consultant at McKinsey. Eventually, though, you will need to ace the McKinsey Solve game to be able to interview with the Firm.
5. Is the McKinsey assessment test the same for everyone?
Everyone taking the McKinsey assessment test gets the same three games—Redrock Study, Sea Wolf and Futures Lab—and everyone has the same time limits. However, the specific scenarios and questions within those games are different for different test-takers, so you can’t just memorize answers. The good news is that the skills they’re testing are always the same, so if you understand what they’re looking for and practice those skills, you’ll be ready no matter what specific questions come up.
6. Can I take the McKinsey assessment test multiple times?
You can only take the test once every 12 months if you get a link from McKinsey, so you have to make it count. Many people have taken it multiple times across different years when they didn’t succeed the first time.
Wrapping Up What You Need to Know About the McKinsey Assessment Test
The McKinsey assessment test is basically McKinsey’s way of seeing if you think like a consultant before they spend time interviewing you in person. I hope this explanation has helped you understand what you’re actually dealing with when you take this test. It’s not impossible, but it does require real preparation and smart thinking.
The main thing I want you to remember is that the test isn’t trying to trick you or make you fail—McKinsey genuinely wants to find great consultants, and they’re using this test to identify people who think logically, solve problems creatively, and make good decisions under pressure.
If you prepare the right way by doing full practice runs, working on your math, learning to organize information quickly, and practicing making decisions when you don’t have all the information, you can absolutely pass this test. I’ve seen people from all different backgrounds and majors pass the McKinsey assessment test, so it’s not about being the smartest person in the room—it’s about being prepared and thinking the way consultants think.
My advice is to start preparing now if you’re going to take the test soon, and don’t wait until the last minute. Use the free practice materials you find online such as our Redrock case course, find multiple simulations of the new format online, and do full practice runs under real test conditions.
Pay attention to how you’re thinking, not just whether you got the answer right or wrong. Take care of yourself on test day—get good sleep, eat a healthy breakfast, and calm your mind before you start. Most importantly, remember that even if you don’t pass the first time, it’s not the end of your consulting dreams—you can always try again next year.
The McKinsey assessment test is challenging, but it’s not impossible to pass. It’s just a test that’s designed to find people who can think clearly, stay organized under pressure, and make smart decisions with incomplete information. Hundreds of people pass the McKinsey Solve game every year, and there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t be one of them if you put in the work and prepare the right way.
Are You Ready to Play the McKinsey Solve Game?
I hope you are now well-equipped with a good overview and the right strategies to pass the Solve game and get a McKinsey interview.
If you want to go the extra mile with your preparation, have a look at my full video simulation, which comes with $400 in bonus materials, including a 230-page PDF guide, an Excel solver for the Sea Wolf to quickly find the final three microbes, 8 sets of past Redrock Analysis questions, 10 Redrock case question drills, a 62-page industry cheat sheet for your consulting case preparation and a free McKinsey Sustainable Futures Lab simulation. With the Combo, you can walk through each step of the games and be sure you know everything about the Solve test.
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Ah yes, and you will also get a 100% money-back guarantee if you don’t pass within 60 days . Just send me the email indicating the test rejection or the test decile showing you are not in the top score quartile, and I will refund the course.
The only reason I can offer this is because I know the course works and you will pass the McKinsey Digital Assessment and move to the case interview stage.
This is why you can be sure that this Combo is the best resource to pass the McKinsey game.
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Any questions? Drop me a message in the chat at the bottom-right and I will reply within 12 hours.
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Anonymous
Verified Customer I was very satisfied with the course and its overall structure. Before taking it, I had little idea of what to expect from the McKinsey Solve or how to approach the different games. The course provided a clear understanding of the assessment format a...
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7 days ago
Chad
Verified Customer Would recommend - I thought this may be a scam, but tried anyways. Turns out its very helpful! I did not realize the intensity of the Solve game, so getting through this material beforehand definitely helped me prepare. The material is pretty spot o...
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2 weeks ago
Marcello
Verified CustomerGreat course: precise and clear through each step of. Makes candidates feel comfortable in facing selections!
1 month ago
Anonymous
Verified Customerdid not pass
3 months ago
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User friendly. Watching videos gave me a better idea of what to expect and useful tips for solve.
5 months ago
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