The final stage of your application is going to London and having dinner with some of the consultants, and then completed a Final Interview the day after. The dinner is all about you getting to ask some questions and getting to know what it is like to be a Newton Consultant. Unless you get intoxicated, are rude, or say something problematic – you’ll be fine! If I’m very honest with you, the dinner was a little awkward. It’s quite a strange dynamic, as everyone is wanting to ask questions but also don’t want to talk too much in the conversation! I actually recommend relaxing, having a drink, and just chatting openly. The other candidates may be as interesting (or more interesting) than the consultants themselves, so don’t feel like you’re missing out if you aren’t speaking to a consultant. Get in contact with some of the candidates you liked on LinkedIn so you can keep in touch after (and ask whether they’ve received feedback). To be honest, I found the entire culture to be a bit odd. I went to a government school, got into a Russell Group university, and I do not study engineering. The majority of the candidates are from elite universities (Cambridge, Oxford etc.), study engineering and sort of fall into a homogenous culture. The consultants themselves are really quite young, and it felt a bit like socialising at a social for PhD students in that most of them are highly intelligent, a bit awkward, and kind of just feel like an older sibling. This was my impression, but you may feel dissimilar. The Final Interview is split into two parts: one is on video with two senior consultants, and the other is with two normal consultants. They ask technical questions, so be prepared and read up other examples on Glassdoor. Both interviews will be in a format which feels very much like a conversation, and you’ll slowly come to realise that they’re digging for deep answers. Be very honest with the candidates and use vivid language if they ask you about something. If they ask about a project you’ve done, explain in detail which parts you were involved in and what your average hour would look like in terms of work. If they ask how you’ve contributed to a team, describe in detail steps you’ve taken. In terms of the technical questions, they’re a little ridiculous. Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers is my philosophy – but I also didn’t progress past this stage so beware! They asked three questions: -If you had 10 black socks and 10 white socks, how many socks would you have to pull out before you were guaranteed a pair? (The answer is 3 as worst-case scenario the first could be white, next would be black and third will definitely be black or white). They scale this question up to different amount of coloured socks, and a higher number of pairs. -Calculate the GDP of Aldi without any information. The answer is taking your own average spending and thinking about the average persons grocery spending, multiplying it by the population, and multiplying it by the percentage of shoppers which shop at Aldi. Is that really an answer – surely you’d still need to know the percentage of people who shop at Aldi? For most of these questions, the answer might as well be the horses name was Friday. -In a train station, you have 3 escalators – how do you choose whether they should go up or down? This one I spent a while staring at the assessors over. Most people’s intuitive answer is to pop some stairs in the middle, as it allows both but this didn’t fit the frame of the question. What’s the answer? It is not “The horses name was Friday” (close though!). You need more going up, as when the train doors open people come out all at once. These are the style of the questions which all seem to be riddle-type efficiency problems. I know they may seem ludicrous, but the assessors really care about the way you talk through these answers. You need to be clear about how you thought through the problem and explain it in a simple way. Just a warning: If you study psychology, they won’t ask you a problem related to motives. If you study economics, they won’t provide you about a case study involving incentives. If you study history, they won’t frame a problem which requires historical understanding. If you study engineering, the questions are perfect. Newton, as much as they like to say they are diverse, are a company with a distinctly engineer focussed culture. Be prepared for these questions, and scour Glassdoor hunting for any previous questions they’ve asked. The final stage of the application just felt as though it didn't reveal much about me as a candidate to the assessors.