FORESIGHT(2023): Summer Internship at Goldman Sachs | Harsh Sukheja |

Brief Introduction

Hello, I am Harsh Sukheja, a 4th year dual degree student from the department of E&ECE. In this blog, I am going to share my journey of how I got an internship in Goldman Sachs and their selection procedure.

How did you secure an internship at Goldman Sachs? How did you prepare for the same?

My journey started during the summer of 2021, right after the end of the 4th semester. It was a difficult time due to the pandemic, and we had very little to do. As per the advice of my seniors, I started doing CP (Competitive Programming). I was also doing two online internships simultaneously, which were unpaid, so I didn’t feel much pressure. However, I would not recommend doing two paid internships in parallel.

My main focus was on CP, although I wasn’t good at it. As soon as the 5th semester started, I stopped doing CP. I resumed it during the December break but left it again when the 6th semester started. I had secured a Mitacs internship for the summers of 2022, which was one of my biggest achievements and challenges. At that time, I didn’t want to pursue research and was worried about my preparation for the CDC internship. However, I took the offer for Mitacs for two reasons: the project was on statistics, which would boost my CV, and who doesn’t want a foreign trip?

Luckily, my Mitacs project was not overloaded, and with the CDC internship in mind, I allocated an hour daily for my CDC preparation in May and June. I started ramping up those minutes in July. I cut my Mitacs internship one week short because the CDC internship test started earlier than expected, but I still missed the tests of a few companies, including Microsoft software, while I was on the flight.

My preparation was for Quant and Data profiles, and I was targeting Goldman Sachs the whole time because my CG was 8.98 at that time, so HFTs were out of scope.

What was the selection procedure like?

On Day 1, I got shortlisted for GS only, so I was laser-focused for the interview. They took two rounds of interviews. In the first round, they asked me to give my introduction, and in the intro only, I made it clear that I wanted to go on the quant side (not telling them explicitly but giving hints like I like betting, guessing, probability, etc.). Then, they asked me questions based on my Mitacs project, for which I was well-prepared as I had just recently finished it.

Then some basic probability questions and 1 CP question in each round. Few of which I remember,

(i) Fair coin, prob of heads, prob of 3 heads, unfair coin: make a fair game.

(ii) ant on cube can go to vertices randomly, expected time to reach diagonally opposite corner

(iii) ant inside/on cube

(iv) Time complexity of sieve, how its log of log

(v) modified question on binary search

(vi) prob of 3 points being in a semicircle

Overall, my interview felt satisfactory to me and turned out satisfactory for them as well.

Who should ideally apply for this job?

If you have an interest in Probability/ Combinatorics/ Statistics, you should apply for the Quant role in GS.

Any specific advice for aspirants applying for internships this year?

Here is some advice that is limited to the Quant role only:

(i) STAT 110 is a super helpful course. I watched till lec 20 and did their exercises (important) as well.

(ii) Heard on the street, Brainstellar, 50 challenging problems of Probability (attempt in this order preferably). Repeat the sequence again.

(iii) Easy/ moderate questions on the interview bit is compulsory. Can/ Can’t attempt hard based on time available/ skill level.

(iv) In the coursework section of CV, highlight probability and data science courses.

(v) Having a project in statistics/ modeling/ probability is a huge boost.

Most importantly, be calm during the whole process. I know it’s easy to say and hard to do from my experience. But I had some awesome friends around to help me do that, and everything turned out to be well after a lot of overthinking (which you should avoid).

All the best Junta for the upcoming CDC internship drive. Machake!