Got the offerSummer Analyst at Goldman Sachs
- Difficulty
- Process took
- 1-2 Weeks
- Rounds
- 3
- Format
- Remote
- Applied via
- Other
How it went
- Confidence is key, but don’t confuse it with arrogance.
What they would tell you
- Confidence is key, but don’t confuse it with arrogance.
How to prepare
- The questions I faced at Goldman Sachs weren’t just about solving the problem, they were about understanding the problem at a deeper level. Before jumping into coding, take a step back and ensure you fully understand the constraints and how they can affect your solution.
Their background
I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to interview with Goldman Sachs for their Summer Analyst 2026 position, I am a final year computer science student from a tier 2 college.
Round by round
- 1
Technical Assessment 160 min
Given strings A and B, determine the minimum-length substring of A that contains all characters of B, without considering character order. My Approach: I started slow, sketching out a brute-force solution, checking every possible substring in A, hunting down those that cover all B’s characters, and tracking the min. I didn’t sugarcoat it, this is O(n²) and not scalable for big datasets. Next,I described a sliding window technique, moving through A with two pointers, expanding and shrinking the window as needed. I walked through an example, detailing the logic, the moving pointers, and how it ensures we’re always chasing the shortest valid snippet. Time complexity dropped to O(n), a big improvement.
- 2
Technical Assessment 260 min
In the second round, the interviewer came in with another coding problem, this time focused on dynamic programming: Problem: You are given a grid where each cell contains some coins. Starting from a given cell, find a path to the destination cell that collects the maximum number of coins. I started solving the problem using a Depth-First Search (DFS) approach since we had to find the path that collects the maximum number of coins. During the discussion, the interviewer asked, "Why not use BFS?" I explained that BFS works well when we're trying to find the shortest path, but in this case, DFS made more sense because it helps explore all possible routes to find the best one. But as I continued, I realized that DFS alone isn't efficient, it has exponential time complexity and would be too slow for larger inputs. So I quickly suggested switching to Dynamic Programming with memoization to optimize the solution.
- 3
HR Round50 min
This round was more of a cultural fit discussion with a mix of HR and behavioral questions. We started off with a couple of resume-related questions where the interviewer asked about my previous work experiences. Why Goldman Sachs?
What came up
A candidate-reported account, lightly edited. Interview processes change by team and date.