#1 Technical Prep Guide - Investment Banking Interviews

June 29, 2025

There are 581 pages of guides you need memorized to succeed in an investment banking interview.

I chose to pursue banking because it’s the hardest path to break into by far within business.

As a college hockey player, I enjoyed pushing myself & competing -

So I loved the challenge of beating out ivy league kids for those prestigious wall street internships.

What makes banking interviews so cutthroat is their unique focus on technical questions.

Most fields like consulting might spend one or two questions asking about technical concepts -

But in banking you get grilled with industry-specific math & conceptual questions for half the interview.

Our academy’s director (30yr industry veteran) said these guides have all you need to win an offer.

He told us to use other resources as supplements but focus 99% of our effort studying these.

I studied these 581 pages religiously summer after freshman year to get ahead of the competition.

Here’s an overview of each guide and what to focus on within each to best prepare for interviews.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • BIWS TECHNICAL GUIDES - HIGH LEVEL OVERVIEW

  • GUIDE #1 - CORE FINANCE CONCEPTS (32pg)

  • GUIDE #2 - ACCOUNTING & 3 FINANCIAL STATEMENTS (99pg)

  • GUIDE #3 - EQUITY VALUE & ENTERPRISE VALUE (95pg) 

  • GUIDE #4 - VALUATION & DCF (118pg) 

  • GUIDE #5 - LEVERAGED BUYOUTS (118pg) 

  • GUIDE #6 - MERGER MODELS (119pg) 

BIWS TECHNICAL GUIDES - HIGH LEVEL OVERVIEW

You’re doing something wrong if you pay to get access to these guides.

They get passed down every year - so just ask an upperclassmen to send you the PDFs.

They’ll have an old version which doesn’t matter because they really don’t change from year-to-year.

I studied with the 2013 version and had no issues.

The full version they have on their website also just has a ton of fluff you don’t need like

  • Equity & Debt Capital Markets

  • Real Estate Industry-Specific Guide

  • Oil & Gas Industry-Specific Guide

  • Banks & Insurance Industry-Specific Guide

  • Restructuring

  • Leveraged Finance

Of the six primary guides - 90% of interview questions will come from the first four.

I drilled those first four over and over before even looking at merger models or LBOs.

Here was my general approach to efficiently memorize each of those four from top to bottom.

STEP 1 - NOTE TAKING

The first ¾ of each guide is pretty much textbook reading with tons of charts and visuals.

They label that section “Key Rules of Thumb”.

I’d start off with a quick skim then go back to take detailed notes on each of these key concepts.

I skipped everything labeled “[OPTIONAL]” because it rarely gets asked about in interviews.

STEP 2 - PRACTICE QUESTIONS

A majority of your studying should focus on memorizing the practice Q&A in the back.

They have several questions with example answers for each conceptual topic.

Over 90% of questions bankers ask in real interviews are WORD-FOR-WORD the exact same as the way the phrase them in the back of the guides.

So being able to recite those example answers word-for-word is all you have to do to succeed.

STEP 3 - DRILLING PRACTICE QUESTIONS

I memorized each guide’s practice questions section-by-section.

For each question I’d scroll down on the PDF far enough to hide the example answer -

Then quiz myself by saying each answer under my breath.

I wrote all the ones I missed or didn’t precisely nail the wording for down on a scratch piece of paper.

Then after finishing that sub-section - I’d start back up at the top and re-do the ones I missed.

This process repeated until I had every question down -

Which I’d then finish by going top-to-bottom once more through that sub-section before moving on.

I spent three hours doing this every Sunday night and had all six guides memorized in a couple months.

GUIDE #1 - CORE FINANCE CONCEPTS (32pg)

At 32pg the first guide is the shortest by a long shot.

There aren’t many actual interview questions that come from the back this guide -

But learning its three foundational concepts is crucial to understand the rest of the guides.

  • Present Value (PV)

  • Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

  • Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)

This is the only guide where I spent more time on the reading than the practice questions.

There’ll be some overlap with your entry-level finance classes but they tack on an industry-specific perspective that’s necessary to understand for interviews.

GUIDE #2 - ACCOUNTING & 3 STATEMENTS (99pg)

This is the guide you should spend the most time on.

Accounting’s known as “the language of business” -

So knowing all the complex jargon and regulations will make you 10x better at all the finance stuff.

You have to know the three statements like the back of your hand to succeed in banking -

Which is why bankers spend an outsized amount of time grilling you on accounting during interviews.

These questions follow a progression and they’ll only move on if you ace the basics first.

They can be broken down into four buckets.

  • (1) CONCEPTUAL ACCOUNTING

  • (2) SINGLE-STEP CHANGES 3 STATEMENTS

  • (3) MULTI-STEP CHANGES 3 STATEMENTS

  • (4) WORKING CAPITAL

Here are three conceptual accounting basic questions you’re guaranteed to get in every interview.

  • QUESTION 1 - What’s the most important financial statement? (Example Answer)

  • QUESTION 2 - How do the three statements link together? (Example Answer)

  • QUESTION 3 - If you could only use two statements to analyze a business, which would you choose and why? (Example Answer)

To prep for the single & multi-step change questions, the examples in the guides have all you need.

They advise structuring your answers in this order.

  • 1st - Explain Income Statement changes (if any)

  • 2nd - Explain Cash Flow Statement changes (if any)

  • 3rd - Explain Balance Sheet changes (if any) AND re-emphasize why it still balances

Brian from Mergers & Inquisitions does an excellent job explaining how to approach these in simple terms in his YouTube videos if you need more help (linked here).

The working capital questions will be similar to the conceptual accounting ones.

As long as you understand the intricacies of the definition like what specific items should be included and excluded from “Current Assets” and “Current Liabilities” - you should be good to go there.

GUIDE #3 - EQUITY VALUE & ENTERPRISE VALUE (95pg)

In my eyes this is the guide that’s the most straightforward.

If you understand the two key differences between the definitions, the rest is a piece of cake.

KEY DIFFERENCE #1 - INVESTOR GROUPS

  • Equity Value - Value to ONLY Equity Investors

  • Enterprise Value - Value to Equity Investors + Debt Investors + Preferred Investors + (others if any)

KEY DIFFERENCE #2 - ASSETS INCLUDED

  • Equity Value - Value of Core-Business Assets + Non-Core Business Assets (e.g. Cash)

  • Enterprise Value - Value of ONLY Core-Business Assets

They’ll first start off by grilling you on the definition with questions like

  • QUESTION 1 - How do you move from Equity Value to Enterprise Value?

  • QUESTION 2 - Can Equity or Enterprise Value ever be negative?

  • QUESTION 3 - What’s the difference between Current & Implied Enterprise Value?

Then they’ll move into the math questions asking how events impact each value such as

  • QUESTION 1 - How do Enterprise Value, Equity Value, EV / EBITDA & P/E change after issuing $100M in new shares?

  • QUESTION 2 - How do those same four items change if they use $50M of that to issue dividends?

  • QUESTION 3 - How do those same four items change if they raise $100M of debt to do that instead?

The Enterprise Value / Equity Value portion of the leaked 400 question guide (linked here) should be enough to get you started learning these.

GUIDE #4 - VALUATION & DCF (118pg)

This is the last of the four guides you should be focusing most of your effort on.

It covers all the most common valuation methodologies and underlying concepts within each including

  • Discount Rates / WACC

  • Free Cash Flow

  • Discounted Cash Flow Analysis

  • Terminal Value

  • Comparable Companies Analysis

  • Precedent Transactions Analysis

  • Other Methodologies (Sum-of-Parts, Liquidation Value, Dividend Discount Model, etc)

Most of these questions are just “check-the-box” formulas you have to have memorized like

  • QUESTION 1 - Walk me through a DCF.

  • QUESTION 2 - What’s the formula to go from revenue to unlevered free cash flow?

  • QUESTION 3 - What are the two methods to calculate terminal value and formula for each?

  • QUESTION 4 - What’s the formula for WACC? How do you calculate cost of equity?

  • QUESTION 5 - How do you un-lever and re-lever beta any what’s the purpose?

The best way to learn these concepts after doing the reading and questions is by using them in action.

I did several case comps and also completed Adventis’ Level II FMC modeling certification.

In both of those I got to physically create the valuations in excel which just helped make the concepts stick much better in my head.

GUIDE #5 - LEVERAGED BUYOUTS (118pg)

As mentioned before - these last two guides rarely get asked about during interviews.

I didn’t bother spending near as much time committing these example answers to memory.

With that being said there are a few conceptual LBO questions I’d be prepared for.

  • QUESTION 1 - Name five main levers you can pull to boost IRR in an LBO.

  • QUESTION 2 - Walk me through a basic LBO. What IRR do PE firms typically target?

  • QUESTION 3 - What are the three main exit strategies for an LBO?

At some of the more elite firms with notoriously rigorous technical interviews -

You’re more likely to get deeper in the weeds with LBO and merger model questions.

If so you should definitely be prepping for the infamous “Paper LBO”.

For those they first ask you to bring out pen & paper and write down bunch of numbers.

From there you basically have to project all the cash flows by hand to estimate returns.

Here’s the example (linked here) I used to practice.

GUIDE #6 - MERGER MODELS (119pg)

The only reason you should bother studying this guide is if you’re interviewing at an elite boutique.

The boutique I interned at strictly advised publicly traded companies.

That meant EPS & accretion / dilution calculations were a must-know for every potential candidate.

Even after interviews, merger math was a core part of our first few weeks of training.

I found a website that lets you download the pdf for this one for free.

Questions here will start mostly conceptual then they’ll become focused on the tougher merger math.

They like to use a follow-up structure for these where each question adds an additional layer.

Here are three examples.

  • QUESTION 1 - What are the advantages and disadvantages of each purchase method in M&A deals?

  • QUESTION 2 - A company with a P/E multiple of 25x buys another for a P/E multiple of 15x. Will the deal be accretive or dilutive?

  • QUESTION 3 - For that same deal, let’s say the buyer has 10 shares, a share price of $25 and a net income of $10. The purchase equity value is $150 and the seller’s net income is also $10. Calculate the percent accretion and walk me through the math.

Cheers 🥂

- Jack