I applied for the position through my university's job board over winter break and got a call from the Chicago campus recruiter who scheduled my first-round (on-campus) interview with a San Fransisco Partner who would be coming down to my university to recruit for both the San Jose and San Fransisco offices. The on-campus interview was very comfortable; the Partner was very down-to-earth, and our conversation was not only job/career-related but was also about other things. It was very casual, and I really felt the PwC company culture through this interview. Then I got a call from the San Jose recruiter, telling me that I had been invited for an office visit in San Jose, which was very cool! PwC paid for a hotel room for me at the Fairmont Luxury Hotel, which is one of the most expensive hotels in San Jose, as well as paid for the plane tickets to and from San Jose. The office visit started with a pre-interview dinner with some of the Associates/Senior Associates/Managers. There were about 15 interviewers and many PwC staff, and we were all divided into groups of 6 for the dinner. Each group consisted of 3 PwC staff and 3 interview candidates. Because it was such a small group, the dinner was more personal than most of the pre-interview dinners I had been to and they PwC staff made sure that we had our questions answered before the interviews. The interviews on the next day took almost all day; It started with an introduction to the company, intro of ourselves, Associate/Senior Associate group panel (basically Q&A sessions), two 30-minute interviews (one with a Partner and one with a Manager), HR presentation, and lunch. The lunch was in the same format as the Pre-Interview dinner. Everyone I met at the office visit and the Partner who interviewed me on campus were all very nice. They really cared about each candidate as a person, not just a number. One piece of advice for anyone interviewing for PwC, at least for the San Jose office: They really value your grades and accounting-related experience. Once I found out that I did not get the offer, I asked for feedback on my performance at the office visit, and the San Jose HR person was very kind as to call me the next day with very useful feedbacks, like positive and negative comments that the interviewers had written down on their evaluation form for me. And although the interviewers thought that I was "a hard-worker, a great person to talk to, and a very passionate person," I did not get the offer because the person they chose had a 4.0 GPA and more accounting internships than I had.

Very straightforward, partners & senior managers were friendly and asked expected technical questions. Key thing to stand out is to really research the company and how the grad programme works - focus on exactly what you will do in assurance, what the role would look like and also some basic accounting understanding.