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Rejected

Software Engineering Summer Intern 2026 at Microsoft

Difficulty
Process took
0-1 Weeks
Rounds
3
Format
Hybrid
Applied via
Company Website

How it went

The placements/internships are mostly luck. It depends on what questions were asked in OA and in interviews by interviewer until or unless ur very good enough to crack placements/internship with ur only effort. While i was asked an ad-hoc problem others got standard leetcode problems like knapsack, string matching, sliding window etc. Make sure to brush up ur OOPS concepts which will be helpful in surprise rounds like LLD rounds. In the interview please read the problem carefully maybe 3 times and then proceed. After reading the question solve 2-3 testcases with interviewer to check if u have understood the question properly.

What they would tell you

The placements/internships are mostly luck. It depends on what questions were asked in OA and in interviews by interviewer until or unless ur very good enough to crack placements/internship with ur only effort. While i was asked an ad-hoc problem others got standard leetcode problems like knapsack, string matching, sliding window etc. Make sure to brush up ur OOPS concepts which will be helpful in surprise rounds like LLD rounds. In the interview please read the problem carefully maybe 3 times and then proceed. After reading the question solve 2-3 testcases with interviewer to check if u have understood the question properly.

How to prepare

OA questions and interview questions (not mine) were standard Leetcode questions. If u have done Strivers A2Z sheet to some level, you will mostly be able to solve the questions smoothly. Give contests regularly on Leetcode to improve ur problem solving skills and time management skills.

Their background

3rd CSE year student

Round by round

  1. 1

    Online Assesment90 min

    The round consisted of two questions. One on simulation using deque other on DP. Question 1: Find the Winner of an Array Game

    Question 2: Maximize Intellectual Gain You are given:

    • A[i] = number of pages in the i-th article

    • I[i] = intellectual value of the article You can read up to p pages in total. Maximize the sum of intellectual values from the selected articles. Constraints:

    • 1 <= n <= 1000

    • 1 <= p <= 100

  2. 2

    Technical Round 250 min

    Design a tokenization algorithm for an LLM which returns no of tokens based on the condition mentioned below. Tokenization Rules ➤ Numbers (0–9):

    • Every 3 digits = 1 token

    • Remaining digits (if not divisible by 3) still count as 1 token

    • Examples: "123456" → 2 tokens, "42" → 1 token ➤ Alphabetic Words (a–z, A–Z):

    • Any consecutive same characters → 1 token

    • Other sequences → break into chunks of 3 characters, each chunk = 1 token

    • Examples:

    • "aaaaa" → 1 token

    • "apple" → "a", "pp", "le" → 3 tokens

    • "aabbbccd" → "aa", "bbb", "cc", "d" → 4 tokens ➤ Special Characters, Whitespace, and Punctuation:

    • Each counts as 1 token per character

    • Examples: "!", " ", "@" → 1 token each This question had a lot of edge cases to be considered. I was able to solve this question at the end of the interview with the help of some hints. But got rejected.

  3. 3

    Low Level Design60 min

    I was surprised to hear that lld was asked for summer interns. The questions that were asked were as follows Design Snakes and Ladder Design Microsoft Word

What came up

MediumHybrid0 1 years

A candidate-reported account, lightly edited. Interview processes change by team and date.

Sources