JP Morgan Interview Experience for Quantitative and Research Analysis Role

JPMorgan visited our campus for QR role in July 2020.
The whole process consisted of 4 rounds.

Round 1: Online Test 

They held an online test in which there were 3 sections, first section consisted of aptitude and probability questions and they were of moderate level and there were about 17 questions in this section, second section consisted of Mathematics questions, topics were Linear Algebra, Differential Equations and Complex Numbers and there were about 6-7 questions. The third section was of Coding Questions, there were 2 coding questions. Every student had different set of questions in each section.

Almost 730 students appeared in the first round and 16 students were shortlisted for interview round. I was one of them.

Round 2 : Online Interview – I

The interview was held through a zoom session. It started with my introduction followed by some Data Structures questions. 

1. Can binary search be applied to Linked List?

2. Algorithm of Quick Sort

3. OOPS and its functions

4. If you are given a sorted array and we rotate it from a particular point which is unknown to us, and we only have the final rotated array, how will you search a given element in this array.

These questions were followed by some Probability questions.

1. You are given a circular board of radius R. A person throws dart at the board and dart can hit the board anywhere with equal probability You have to find the expected value of the distance between the center of the board and the board where the dart hits.
I told her the basic approach to this question and then she modified the question to find the probability that the expected value of the distance between the center of the board and the board where the dart hits is d. Again, she checked my approach and was quite satisfied with my answer.

2. Three points are lying on a circle. Find the probability that these points lie on the same semicircle.
I was again able to tell the approach to this question and she appreciated the approach.

The interview lasted for 40 minutes.

4 students cleared the first interview round and I was one of them.

Round 3 : Online Interview – II

The interview started with a small discussion on my first interview and then he asked me 2 puzzles.

1. You are given two hourglass which could measure time of 7 minutes and 4 minutes respectively and we have to measure 9 minutes using these.

2. There are 20 horses and we have 5 race tracks. How many minimum number of races are needed to find the fastest 3 horses out of these 20?

After these puzzles he shifted to some probability questions.
1. You toss an unbiased coin and head appears, find the probability of getting head on tossing it again.
I told him that logically speaking it would be 1/2, and also we could apply Bayes’ Theorem here.
He further added that he does not want me to think logically or apply Bayes’ Theorem, how will I reach to the answer?
I tried thinking something but ended up applying Bayes’ Theorem, the answer he was looking was that since both the events are independent, so the probability of getting a head second time does not depend that we got a head or a tail in first toss.

2. Then he asked some questions on continuous probability distribution including probability distribution functions, expected value and probability of some event in case of continuous variable.
I could answer these questions.

Then there was some general discussion about my projects.

This round lasted for about 50-55 minutes.

I did not make it to the last round.
2 students were selected for the HR round and finally they were offered internship in this role. 

It was a great learning experience since it was my first company interview.