Morgan Stanley — Off Campus Interview Experience

Hola, Atharva Gadekar here, a 3rd year student currently pursuing B.Tech in Information Technology at IIIT Allahabad. In this blog, I wanted to share my journey and the experiences that led to towards getting a Summer Analyst Internship at Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley is a leading global investment bank and wealth management firm that assists individuals, families, institutions, and governments in raising, managing, and distributing capital. The firm has an exceptional Technology division, offering rapid growth opportunities due to its innovative and supportive work culture. Joining Morgan Stanley provides a platform for professional development within a prestigious organization highly respected in the financial industry. The firm’s commitment to technology and innovation fosters continuous learning and development, enabling you to enhance your skills and advance your career. Being part of such an esteemed organization is a testament to your capabilities and significantly boosts your professional credibility.

The Beginning

Back in October 2023, I came to know that Morgan Stanley had an opening for the position of Summer Analyst Internship. I contacted several people for referrals for this position, and was finally able to secure one. After receiving the referral, I submitted the recruitment form on Workday through the company’s portal.

Job Profile : Summer Intern (2 Months)
Role : Summer Technology Analyst
Eligibility Criteria : A Strong Resume, Great Soft Skills, Graduating 2025

Always make your resume in Overleaf, and necessarily a single page resume. I preferred a single column resume, the choice is your though. Try to write the project descriptions in your resume in bullet points. Also made sure to include the words “I contributed to ___ feature” if its a group project. You can find some useful templates here : Overleaf-Templates-IIITA

The Online Assessment

I received the link for coding round in mid February. The coding round was conducted on HackerRank and consisted 3 section :

i) Debugging : 9 questions

• You are expected to debug the errors in the code given
• Compile your code and pass the given test cases
• The problem statements were small and straightforward

ii) Aptitude : 20 questions

• Mathematical Concepts were used
• Logical Reasoning was used

iii) DSA : 3 questions

• 1st question was brute force — LC Easy
• 2nd question was reducible to a hashing problem — LC Medium
• 3rd question was multimap — LC Doable Hard

The Technical Round — 1.2 hours

I was elated when I received a call to schedule my interview a few days after the coding round. The team was really cooperative and took into consideration my availability as well. This is how it went :

• Introduced myself to the two interviewers

Tips: Keep your introduction within the 5 minutes window.
Touch upon all the important experiences that you have had in this college life.
Include the not just the professional skills but also the soft skills which you have learnt through these experiences of yourse learnt through these experiences of yours

• Was asked to solve the problem : Reverse a number

Tips: The DSA questions are pretty variable. Just because I was a given an easy question, definitely doesn’t mean you would have it easy too. Be strong with your concepts, even with tries for that matter. Take a moment to write think, and frame your thought process for the question before beginning to write the actual code. This is very important as being transparant with the interviewers work only in your favour :
1. This shows that you are competant individual who is able to effectively communicate his thoughts and would be an assest to the team in which you work in the future.
2. The interviewer can help you get back on track if you ever get stuck, or are swaying away from the right direction

3. Speak as you write the code, wherever necesary. Add comments if necesaary. Write modular code, give emphasis on good naming scheme.

Tips:After completing writing the code, test it for edge cases. Dry run it infront of the interviewer. Explain why long long is used instead of int, or tiny details like that (if time permits).

• Next, the hard part. Subjects. MS gives a significant focus on subjects like OOPs, DBMS and OS. The interviewers moved onto DBMS after the DSA question. I was two table and was asked to perform SQL queries on it.
• Required the knowledge of all kinds of joins
• Normalisation understanding required
• Sorting, and Grouping knowledge required
• Find the 2nd lowest and 3rd lowest order value from the table. Different approaches and their time complexities were discussed.

Tips:Practice LeetCode’s SQL queries Top questions very well. You may also go through the doc I had made during my preparation : SQL Query Practice.pdf — Google Drive

• After DBMS, came OOPs and general PPL questions. PPL isn’t usually asked in interviews, but I had to answer the basics. Questions like :
• What is more efficient compiler or interpreter
• Which language is compiled and which is interpreted
• What are the advantages of Java. What exactly is bytecode
• What is the meaning of platform independence
• Explain the pillars or OOPs

Tips: Make sure to read about some deeper concepts in C++ like virtual functions, OOPs in C++, how do compilers work. Some high level concepts in Java like multi threading, exception handling, platform independence.

• Next, I was asked questions about Operating Systems. I was asked some questions on virtual memory, how it works, paging, page faults, etc. I was also asked about parallel processing (high level only)

Tips:I believe as far as Operating System is concerned, Love Babbar’s notes for OS are amazing. They cover all the topics neceassary for interviews and would advice you to read the same, and be wrote by heart with it, as all the sections covered are important

• Finally, I was given an opportunity to talk about my project. My strong hold. I wouldn’t elaborate much on my projects but would like to give some general pointers which can help you improve your project presentation skills

1. Demo your project on a hosted website. I used Vercel to deploy my frontend and Render for the backend. (Optional) You can have your own domain names, a lot of people aren’t even aware that you can get your own domain name for free.
   — Apply for Github Pro Sudent Developer Program.
   — Explore to available free domains options, namecheap would be one of them.
   — Go ahead get your own .me domain and connect it to Vercel
2. Explain the problem you wished to solve with your project. If the project has won in a hackathon, do mention that as well.
3. Don’t open the code and start explaining it unless necessary.
4. Explain your reason of choice for the chosen tech stack for your project. Mention its advantages, from both efficiency POV and developer POV
5. Explain any feature for which you modified the code for efficiency sake and used a better approach for an imporved product experience. Explain your thought process behind writing the logic for this feature (eg using local storage in addition to database for somoother experience)

The Technical + HR Round — 1 hour

This round was mainly centered around my resume. The interviewer asked me in detail about every single line that was mentioned in my resume. Starting from my 10th and 12th education, to asking what is GeekHaven, what was the Hackathon project that made my team win. I was also presented with situational questions and general HR related questions. I was also asked questions about my projects and was asked to demonstrate them explaining their use-case. Overall if you have a strong resume, you have high chances of getting through this round. Make sure to have prepared answers for all situational and HR questions before hand. I was also given an opportunity to ask questions to the interviewer, mid interview. I believe I had asked some interesting questions. Try to ask questions which can make a mark on the interviewer, specially questions tailored for the company to which you are applying. This sets you apart from the people who ask generic questions like “how does your day look like”, “how is the work life balance”, etc.

Tips: Such rounds are primarily focused on soft skills like fluency and situational awareness. Be extremely mindful of what you wish to say and how you convey your thoughts. Dress well, as this is important for every interview, but pay special attention during HR rounds. Ensure you have good conversations with your interviewers in HR rounds. Remember, in such interviews, the moment your interview becomes an interrogation, the scales begin to tip against you. On the contrary, if you can hold a two-way conversation at least intermittently, they tip in your favor. Mention about the previous work experiences if any. Do convey all the skills that you gained like : professional communication, time management, stress handling, refactoring, code review, etc.

General Tips

1. Go through the past interview experiences of the company to which you are applying thoroughly before your interview. These help a hell lot.
2. Keep a water bottle handy during your interview. Drinking water improves your concentration a lot and helps when you are stressed and have a dry throat. It helps you gain your lost momentum back without making it seem weird with the interviewer.
3. My preparation wasn’t any different from what you know. Striver’s Sheet, LC, IB. I gave more focus on development primarily because I loved it more than DSA, but again, I would advice against it. Be sure to keep your coding fundamentals strong. Give at least LC contests regularly.
4. The intern season has come to an end doesn’t mean your life has. There is a lot more to life than just this phase. If you weren’t able to secure a good internship, get an intern in a startup (this is where development helps btw), doesn’t matter if it pays low, work just for the experience, finally study well and ace the placement season. Trust me, you can do it. The fact that you are a part of IIIT A speaks volumes about your caliber and reinforces the idea that you can ace your placement season if you study well.
5. Don’t forget to enjoy your college life. Don’t just keep working hard aimlessly, have a vision. Don’t just choose Web Dev or App Dev just because others do, Do what you like.
6. Grow your network on LinkedIn. It is very important given the times that we are in. LinkedIn helps a lot with referrals. Add new connections on a regular basis, don’t be afraid to ask referrals, prepare a template for requesting referrals, keep it short and to the point. Don’t ping people more than twice. Send connections with invite messages if you want people to respond earlier. Keep notifications active for startup jobs on LinkedIn. Don’t comment interested on people’s posts, instead go ahead and DM them (given that the post seems legit). Keep applying for these startups, you will land one.
7. Don’t get discouraged if you keep receiving rejections. Please understand that all rejections gradually, propel you towards an acceptance. Have faith in yourself, this too shall pass my friend.
8. Reach out to your seniors! Everyone is pretty chill and helpful

Clap if you read through this ;)

See ya, Atharva Gadekar