Position: Cohort 2023
Overview
This is a technical prepatory program part of Uber. The 2023 cohort class has a 4% acceptance rate and over 2000 candidates. They hosted 5 workshops 2-3 hours each where each workshop contained a section to educate about the different sectors of Uber, past alumnis as well as data structures and algorithms lesson. You are assigned homework that is essentially due within 2 weeks of the workshops and you also get paired with a mentor that grades these assigned homeworks. The mentors is responsible for any other questions you may have, as well as your progression throughout this program.
A different mentor conducts a mock interview you for every workshop, which is super nice for direct feedback. Lastly at the end of the program, you have the opportunity to do a two round interview for an internship or Uber Star if you are a sophomore. My questions were the same difficulty as the mock interviews. I still did not have the most interview experience at this time and I was having trouble understanding my interviewer so I thought I performed poorly, but they still gave me an offer!
CodePath Technical Interview Prep
At the same time while I was doing this prepatory program, I was also doing the CodePath Technical Interview Prep Advanced Course. Similar to this, have workshops that are weekly to help you prep for technical interviews. They usually have a lesson plan for each data structure / algorithm and then puts you into pods for every session where you can work with others and 1 mentor that oversees multiple problems that your pod tries to solve.
Comparison
I would say in comparison, Uber was more helpful as I got direct feedback from my mentor on what I could’ve done better in my homework, as well as other strategies that I could’ve incorporated. The CodePath is more of a “you get what you put in”, but I’d still recommend this as the acceptance is a lot higher and a good starting point for most students in college.
This summer was tough for me, as I was balancing these two technical courses as well as my Uline internship and a univerisity physics course. However, they were both trivial in mastering my technical interviewing for the future.
Feel free to reach out to me for more questions about my experience!