Programming Interview for PhD Admission in Computer Science A prospective supervisor is interested in me, and has asked me for programming interview. As I have been told, his research group does a lot of system programming, and he is seeking a good programmer.

I have no industry experience in programming, though I have programmed for assignments, projects, and a Master's thesis. I know that, as a computer scientist, it is essential to have good programming skills. I tried to search for some tips about programming interviews for prospective PhDs, but could not find anything.

Does it differ from industrial interview? Did anyone have similar experience? Any references or tips?
I had the interview yesterday. I would like to share the experience as it might be useful for anybody who might go through similar kind of interviews in the future.

The interview was via Skype with an outsourced software engineer (not the prospective supervisor), and we used shared .doc file to solve two programming problems about strings. By the way, most of programming interviews I had (mostly industrial and this academic one) pretty much involve strings manipulation and sometimes data structure. 

The interview lasted for an hour whereby I was given 20 minutes to solve each problem and 10 minutes to discuss. The general impression was positive. The concept was always known, yet I needed some practicing to make my code works.
I was given the choice to choose the programming language I like to write in.

I would say, bachelor level of programming is enough. You will just need to revise and practice a little bit your information. You might need to focus on the logic you follow more than the small details that differ from language to another.