I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Optiver (Chicago, IL) in Dec 2015
Interview
First you need to pass the 8 minute math test (very difficult, try calculationrankings.com for practice). Then there is a phone screen - all behavioral, very easy to advance. Then a technical phone interview that is basically all mental math and brain-teasers. Difficult to prepare.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Assign A=1,...,Z=26. Find an 8 letter word whose sum is less than 50.
spent about 1.5 months pretty much purely dedicated to preparing for interviews for all the pre-penultimate programs (Optiver, IMC, JS, SIG, Citadel, etc). I used these resources:
Green book (Really good starter but I got bored of it after a few weeks)
EverythingQuant (Went through literally every single interview prep question, went through the interview guides, and completed the probability course just to make sure I covered all bases)
Briefly read through this guide
Watched coding Jesus in my spare time (not sure if this helped directly lmao but he’s a great creator and very informative)
Mental math test, beat the odds, online puzzle like games etc online, brain teasers during physical interview and a behavioral interview where they want to assess how competitive and assertive you are.
OA was weird and hard. there was only three sections (i think) this year compared to 5 last year. questions are weird and I don't know how they can judge your ability base on that.
