I recently appeared for the Cisco Technical Intern 2027 On-Campus Online Assessment and wanted to share my experience for anyone preparing.

OA Pattern

• Duration: 90 minutes

• Total Questions: 42

  • 20 MCQs (CS Fundamentals)
  • 2 Coding Questions
  • 20 Subjective Questions (CS Fundamentals)

MCQs & Subjective

The theoretical section was more technical than I expected.

Topics included:

• Operating Systems
• Computer Networks
• Object-Oriented Programming
• Computer Architecture

The subjective section wasn't made up of short factual questions. Most required proper technical explanations, so they took considerably more time than typical MCQs.

Coding Round

There were 2 implementation-focused coding problems. Tough mainly because of the time crunch — 42 questions in 90 minutes doesn't leave much room to think, especially with the subjective section being lengthy and detailed. The coding questions were solid DSA problems dressed up in real-world scenarios, and both required using structs (OOP-style) in the solution rather than plain functions/variables.

Coding Question 1: Sniping Detection (Sliding Window)

A problem about detecting "bid sniping" on an auction site — for each incoming bid (in chronological order), you need to determine:

1. Whether the current user now has ≥ K bids within the last W seconds (sliding time window).
2. The smallest user ID that currently qualifies as "sniping" at that moment.

Core idea: Sliding window per user + a way to track/query the globally smallest qualifying user ID efficiently (e.g., a multiset/ordered structure of currently-sniping user IDs, updated as windows slide). Straightforward on the surface, but efficient implementation (especially the second part — smallest sniper across all users) required some thought under time pressure.

Coding Question 2: Drone Delivery with Battery Swap Stations

A grid-based shortest-path problem: a drone flies from a depot to a customer location on a grid with walls, a limited battery capacity (max moves before needing a charge), and a small set of "kiosk" cells where it can fully recharge — but only using a limited, global budget of swap vouchers (K total for the whole trip).

Core idea: BFS/Dijkstra over an expanded state space — (position, remaining battery, vouchers used) — since the same cell can be visited with different battery/voucher combinations that are genuinely different states. Watch for battery hitting 0 outside a kiosk (dead), and for vouchers running out.

Both problems needed the solution written using structs (not just primitive variables/arrays), so the OOP structuring added a bit of extra overhead on top of getting the algorithm right.

Difficulty

• MCQs: Medium
• Subjective: Medium–Hard (mainly due to length and technical depth)
• Coding: Medium–Hard

The biggest challenge wasn't necessarily the difficulty — it was the time limit. Solving 42 questions in just 90 minutes requires strong time management, especially because the subjective questions are fairly detailed.

Preparation Tips

• Revise OS, CN, OOP, Computer Architecture, and C/C++ fundamentals.
• Practice sliding window problems that track a "top/smallest qualifying entity," not just window sums/counts.
• Practice grid BFS/Dijkstra with extra state dimensions (resource/budget tracking) — a very common OA twist.
• Be comfortable writing clean C++ code using structs/classes.
• Solve mock OAs under strict time limits to improve speed.

This was an on-campus online assessment conducted for students from participating colleges through their Training & Placement cells.

Hope this gives future candidates a better idea of what to expect. Happy to answer questions in the comments!