Firm guides
Prep to the firm, not to a generic case
All three run life-sciences market sizing, so that is table stakes everywhere. What separates them is what sits on top.
Science and portfolio
ClearView Healthcare Partners
A life-sciences-only boutique where more than half of consultants hold a life-sciences PhD. The signature is a separate science discussion built around your own background.
Pricing and access
Putnam Associates
The pricing-and-market-access specialist. Sizing shows up constantly; the distinctive layer is the payer reasoning stacked on top of it.
Commercial analytics
ZS Associates
The analytics and sales-force-effectiveness shop. Two live cases plus a written case presentation in the final round, which the others do not emphasize.
Case archetype
Patient funnel market sizing
The structure half the other archetypes contain. Prevalence or incidence, diagnosis, treatment, share, adherence, net price, and the traps at each step.
Side by side
Comparing the four
ClearView, Putnam, ZS and Trinity in one table: the loop at each, and how to sequence prep when you are applying to more than one.
Why this exists
Every case-prep resource is generic, and life-sciences firms are not
Look at the resources page of almost any university consulting club and you will find the same list: Case in Point, Victor Cheng, CaseCoach, PrepLounge, FastMath. Good material, all of it. None of it covers drug forecasting, rare-disease pricing, payer and market access, device reimbursement, or diagnostics adoption.
That gap matters because life-sciences firms case almost entirely on those topics. A PhD who can talk mechanism cold still loses the case on the market-access question. An MBA who can size any market still models a knee implant like a drug and loses the room in the first two minutes.
A drug case runs on a patient funnel: incidence or prevalence, then diagnosis, treatment, share, adherence, duration. A device case does not. There is no adherence on an implant. It is a procedure, sold once, to a hospital and a surgeon, inside a bundled payment where your implant is a cost rather than a pass-through. Reaching for the patient funnel out of habit is the single most common way candidates lose a device case.
What we publish here
Firm-specific guides, worked case walkthroughs, and the frameworks that only show up in life-sciences cases. Everything is free to read. The paid kit is the same material organized into a full prep sequence, with 8 worked cases, a memorizable number bank, and audio walkthroughs.
Every figure we publish is illustrative and in-band. In-band means it is the right order of magnitude and would survive five minutes of checking against PubMed or a 10-K. If a number here can be disproven that fast, the work has failed. Round structures and interview formats move by recruiting cycle and by track, so treat every count as a range and confirm your specific loop with your recruiter.
Start here
5 life-sciences cases and 1 framework, free
Five prompts across drugs, devices, diagnostics and digital health, plus the patient funnel, the framework that shows up inside more life-sciences cases than any other. Work them cold before you look at the hints.