Investment Banking interview preparation
Every question below is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it. Answers are written the way you would actually say them out loud — answer first, then the mechanism, then the limitation.
100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them
- Questions
- 100
- Traced to a firm
- 100
- Firms
- 46
- Updated
- September 2026
098Would you deliver an analysis on time with 90 percent confidence in the numbers, or delay it to get to 100 percent?Goldman SachsInvestment Banking · New York · 2025
Say this
Deliver on time, and flag exactly which parts I am not confident in. In banking a late answer is often useless, but an unqualified wrong number is worse. The professional move is to hit the deadline with the uncertainty labelled.
Then walk it
- Start by rejecting the premise that those are the only two options. The third path is to deliver on time and say precisely where the 10 percent of doubt sits.
- Then the judgement: it depends on what the number is for. A directional figure for an internal discussion can go out at 90 percent. A number going into a fairness opinion, a public document or a signed agreement cannot.
- So I would triage: is this decision-critical and irreversible, or is it an input to a conversation that will iterate?
- And the escalation point, which is what they are really testing: I would tell my associate before the deadline, not after, so they can decide whether to take the risk or buy more time from the client. Hiding the uncertainty is the only genuinely wrong answer.
- Then close with the practical habit: I would send it with a short note saying which two assumptions are soft and what I would need to firm them up.
Where candidates lose it
Picking one horn of the dilemma and defending it absolutely. Both extremes are wrong. The answer is on time, with the uncertainty disclosed, escalated early, and the threshold set by what the number will be used for.
Expect next
- What if your associate tells you to send it without the caveat?
- Tell me about a time you were in an ethical dilemma.
- Tell me about a time you fell behind schedule.
Reported by candidates at Goldman Sachs (Investment Banking, New York, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
100Why should we take you over the other candidates from your university with exactly the same experience?Rothschild & CoInvestment Banking · Milan · 2025Houlihan LokeyInvestment Banking · New York · 2026MorningstarGeneralist · Chicago · 2024
Say this
Do not claim to be smarter or more driven, because everyone in the room says that. Name one specific, verifiable thing you have that they probably do not, and connect it to the work.
Then walk it
- The honest framing first: on paper we are similar, and I would not pretend otherwise. So the answer has to be something specific rather than an adjective.
- Then the differentiator, and it should be concrete. Depth in one sector nobody else in the class has looked at. A language and a market. A technical skill like Python or SQL you have actually used on a dataset. Having run something with real accountability and real money.
- Then tie it to their business, not to your CV. Something like: your industrials team does a lot of cross-border work in Italy, and I can read Italian filings and speak to a management team without an interpreter. That is useful on day one.
- Then the evidence, in one line, because the claim is worthless unless it is checkable.
- And avoid the two failure modes: listing adjectives, which is unfalsifiable and forgettable, or disparaging other candidates, which reads badly in a business where you will spend your life in a small team.
Where candidates lose it
Answering with 'work ethic' and 'passion'. Every candidate says both and neither can be verified. Pick a specific, checkable capability and connect it to something their desk actually does. Specificity is the entire answer.
Expect next
- What is something about you that is not on your CV?
- Why this group, and what do you add that someone else cannot?
- What is one thing you wish had gone differently today?
Reported by candidates at Rothschild & Co (Investment Banking, Milan, 2025); Houlihan Lokey (Investment Banking, New York, 2026); Morningstar (Generalist, Chicago, 2024). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.