What Is A Typical Computer Science Ph.D. Interview Like? I had my very first-ever interview for a Ph.D. position (program analysis) in computer science in Germany today. Well, after sending my application, I was asked to prepare a two-page research statement which I was given positive feedback on and, consequently, was invited to take an interview so that &quot;[...] You will be asked some non-technical and some technical questions, including some programming questions&quot;. In the interview, and after saying hi, how are you, and tell me a little about yourself, the professor started firing algorithmic questions towards me. He even asked me to implement an algorithm for a string manipulation question in firepad.
Well, I wasn't prepared to be asked directly about coding and finding working algorithms for specific problems and, unfortunately, my mind went completely blank. I thought an interview would include conceptual technical questions like tell us about your ideas in our field of research or tell us about your master's thesis or at least I'd expected to be asked some programming questions like what is the difference between this and that in Java or tell us about collections in Java. My question is now:
Does a typical Ph.D. interview in computer science really include such detailed questions? or I was a very unlucky person that my first ever interview went this way?
There really is no &quot;typical&quot; interview protocol for CS PhD positions. The kinds of questions asked will mostly depend on the qualities and skills that the PI deems relevant for the position. If the work requires specialized technical knowledge, it's possible that the PI will try to test this knowledge, and programming tasks are a valid way of doing that.
In your case, one could argue that the PI slightly miscommunicated the contents of the interview, since a programming task is arguably not a programming question.