Goldman Sachs

I went through the Goldman Sachs campus hiring process for the Summer Analyst role. The first stage was an online assessment, and it was more varied than a normal coding test. Along with programming questions, there were sections covering aptitude, CS fundamentals and some subjective questions. The coding problems were around the medium level, so managing time between the different sections was important. I concentrated on solving the coding questions first and then used whatever time remained for the other sections. Similar campus reports describe a combination of DSA, aptitude, CS MCQs and subjective questions in the assessment. After the OA, I was shortlisted for the interviews. My first technical round started with a short introduction and then moved directly into my projects. The interviewer wanted to know what I had actually implemented rather than just hearing the technology names from my resume. I explained the architecture and some of the design decisions I had made. The DSA part came afterward. I was given a problem involving a binary tree and had to explain the approach before writing the pseudocode. I first described the recursive idea and then discussed the time and space complexity. The interviewer asked me to dry-run the solution on a sample case, which helped me catch one edge case before finalizing the approach. Candidate reports from Goldman Sachs also describe interviewers asking candidates to explain their approach, write pseudocode and perform dry runs rather than simply producing code immediately. The second round was quite different. Instead of another long sequence of DSA problems, the interviewer spent more time on my resume. We discussed one of my projects in considerable detail, including the database structure and why I had chosen a particular design. I was asked some DBMS and OOP questions as follow-ups. At one point, I was asked to modify part of the database design for a different requirement, so I had to reason about the schema instead of recalling a textbook definition. The final conversation was more behavioral. I was asked about teamwork, handling disagreements and why I wanted to work at Goldman Sachs. I also had the opportunity to ask questions about the engineering teams and the internship. A selected candidate report from a later Goldman Sachs cycle similarly describes project discussion, a DSA problem, and a final round mixing technical, analytical and HR questions. I received the selection confirmation after completing the process. My biggest takeaway was that the interviews were not purely competitive-programming focused. Strong DSA helped me get through the coding discussions, but being able to explain my projects and defend technical decisions was just as important during the later rounds.