Citigroup Investment Banking Summer Analyst Interview Guide

Citigroup scores investment banking summer analyst candidates on categories that reach well past technical skill, into leadership, market awareness, and knowledge of the firm. Even the questions you ask at the end can be evaluated on their own. Interviewers choose their own questions inside each round, so prepare to cover behavioral, technical, and markets at every stage.

This guide breaks down each stage of Citi's IB summer analyst interview process, what interviewers look for, and how to prepare with real example questions, actionable tips, and resources.

Citigroup IB summer analyst interview process

Citi scores every candidate against a consistent set of categories, but interviewers pick their own questions in every live round, so no two interviews look alike. You interview for the New York program as a generalist, and placement into a group comes after the offer, so your workload and culture depend on where you land. Citi's regional offices run separate processes.

Here's an example of what the interview process can look like:

1. Application and resume screen: Standard online submission. Recent cycles have opened in late December or early January and closed within weeks, with Citi reviewing on a rolling basis and filling most of the class months before the deadline. Outside Citi's target school list, a director, MD, or VP pushing your resume to HR is more impactful than an analyst or associate referral.
2. HireVue video screen: Timed video responses, scored by HR before any banker sees your name.
3. First-round interview: A 30-45 minute one-on-one with an analyst, associate, or sometimes a VP, mixing behavioral and technical questions.
4. Superday: Three back-to-back 30-minute Zoom breakout rooms staffed by MDs, directors, and VPs.

Citigroup Early ID Leadership Program and the accelerated interview path

Citi's Early ID Leadership Program is an accelerated route into the IB summer analyst interview process for sophomores, and it moves you in front of interviewers months ahead of the general applicant pool. Recent cycles have run twice, with fall applications opening in October and spring applications opening in February.

HR makes the selection from your resume and application alone, so networking doesn't affect who gets in.

The program runs three to five weeks, virtually, and pairs you with a Citi mentor for one-on-one sessions covering behavioral prep, technical concepts, and mock interviews.

Completing it moves you into an interview ahead of the general pool. That accelerated path can run straight to a Superday or through a compressed first round, and a case study can appear alongside it.

HireVue video screen

Citi's HireVue screen for IB summer analysts is a set of timed recorded responses reviewed by HR before any banker sees your application. No interviewer sits on the other side, so nothing you say gets a follow-up or a chance to recover. Most questions are behavioral, with one markets or business news prompt usually included.

Citi tends to reuse the same questions across a recruiting cycle, so ask anyone at your school who's already recorded theirs what questions they were asked.

Prepare your stories and a current markets view in full before you open the recording, because the timer starts as soon as each question appears. Plan for three to six questions with roughly 30 seconds of prep and one to three minutes to answer, and assume you only get one take.

Reviewers look for:

• Clear self-presentation: Whether your background and motivation come across in a structured answer without an interviewer guiding you
• Market awareness: Whether you follow business news and can connect a recent story to Citi's businesses
• Self-awareness: How you describe a mistake and what you changed afterward
• Delivery on camera: Whether you stay composed and on pace inside a fixed recording window
• Structured answers: Whether your responses stay organized from start to finish without an interviewer to redirect you

Recently asked questions

Here are real questions from Citi HireVues in recent cycles:

• Tell me about yourself.
• What are three words that describe you?
• Tell me about a time you made a mistake and how you worked through it.
• Tell me about a class you took and how it prepares you for this role.
• Give me an example of business news you've read recently that could affect Citi.
• What are you following in the markets?
• Pitch me a stock.

First-round interview

Citigroup's first-round interview for the IB summer analyst role is a 30-45 minute one-on-one with an analyst, associate, or occasionally a VP. Most conversations open with behavioral questions and turn technical once your early answers show enough depth.

Interviewers claim first-round slots on a volunteer basis, so your interviewer may have signed up days earlier and prepared a personal list of questions. Expect a wide range in style, from relaxed conversation to fast technical questioning.

Interviewers score you across six categories on a 1-to-5 scale. Citi doesn't publish those criteria, so prepare against all six. Two categories depend on preparation rather than performance: your knowledge of Citi, and the questions you ask at the end of the interview.

1. Career history and interests: How your background, coursework, and GPA build the case for an IB summer analyst seat
2. Business skills: Whether you track markets, follow business news, and can reason commercially about what you read
3. Technical skills: Your command of accounting linkages, DCF mechanics, enterprise vs. equity value, accretion/dilution, and paper LBO walkthroughs
4. Leadership and impact: Specific situations where you led a team, drove a result, or recovered from a failure, with enough detail to show what you contributed
5. Knowledge of the industry and the firm: How far your research into Citi goes past surface facts, into specific deals, group structure, and recent strategic moves
6. Quality of the questions you ask: Whether your closing questions reflect real knowledge of Citi's business and recent transactions

A 5 in any category means the interviewer has nothing left to ask.

Every technical question I asked them, they nailed it, on the head, nothing wrong. Every time they answer a question, I'm just like, yeah, makes sense, I don't have anything else to follow up with, because the answer was just that good. That's what a five is.
— Citi IB analyst and interviewer

A 1 is a short answer that leaves the interviewer guessing what you did and forces them to ask again.

Your resume and GPA set the interviewer's expectations before you speak. Citi's IB summer analyst postings ask for a preferred GPA of 3.5 or above, with an informal bar closer to 3.8 for business majors and nearer 3.6 for STEM majors like engineering or computer science.

Neither one decides the round. Your resume may account for as little as 10% of the decision, with the conversation carrying the rest, and a strong referral can offset a lighter GPA.

The resume is a quick thing. It's to get me to formulate what I might be expecting in this interview. But obviously, you've got to let a person defend themselves with their own words. So you can't make a sole assumption just off a resume.
— Citi IB analyst and interviewer

Recently asked questions

Here are questions shared by a Citi IB interviewer:

• Tell me about yourself, and why Citi?
• Tell me about a time you failed, and a time you had to lead a group.
• Walk me through the three financial statements and how they link together.
• A company buys a factory this year. Given its depreciation schedule, walk me through how each statement looks three years out.
• Walk me through a paper LBO.
• Company A acquires Company B. Given both PE ratios, is the deal accretive or dilutive?

Superday

Citi's IB summer analyst Superday is the final round of the loop, a single Zoom session that separates behavioral and technical questioning into dedicated rooms. You rotate through three back-to-back 30-minute breakout rooms: one behavioral, one technical, and one that mixes both and can move toward markets.

At least one of the three rooms includes a managing director, and the other two typically run with directors and VPs. Rooms can run two interviewers to one candidate, so prepare for follow-ups coming from two directions at once.

The same categories carry over from the first-round interview, scored 1 to 5, with a written section added. Each room records your strengths, areas to improve, fit with Citi's culture and guidelines, and a yes-or-no offer recommendation to HR.

On top of the six categories, Superday interviewers evaluate:

• Depth under senior follow-ups: Whether your answers hold up when an MD or director pushes into second and third-order questions
• Behavioral specificity: Detailed situations with enough substance to show your individual contribution inside the team's work
• Technical range across formats: Your command of accounting, valuation, and modeling questions in a round dedicated entirely to them
• Consistency across rooms: Whether your stories and market views stay the same across three separate conversations
• Culture and guidelines fit: How your motivation and working style match Citi's leadership principles of taking ownership, delivering with pride, and succeeding together

Recently asked questions

Here are real interview questions reported from recent Citi Superdays, grouped by room:

Behavioral room:

• Tell me about yourself, and why Citi?
• Tell me about a time you made a mistake and how you worked through it.

Technical room:

• Walk me through $10 of depreciation across the three statements.
• A company trades at 15x EV/EBITDA with a 20% EBITDA margin, so what's its EV/Revenue multiple?
• Explain terminal value and the two ways to calculate it.
• Walk me from revenue down to unlevered free cash flow.

Mixed room:

• What are you following in the markets right now?
• Pitch me a stock.
• How would a rise in interest rates change a DCF?

How to prepare for the Citigroup IB summer analyst interview

1. Cover all six scoring categories: Prepare behavioral stories, technical fundamentals, and a current markets view for the four categories that depend on how you perform in the room. Write out your Citi research and your closing questions before the first call, since those two don't change based on the conversation.
2. Build technical fluency across the full range: Be ready to walk through the three financial statements, project them from a depreciation schedule, and explain how enterprise value differs from equity value. Practice a paper LBO and an accretion or dilution call from two PE ratios out loud until you can narrate the mechanics without pausing.
3. Write resume bullets with specifics: Give your most recent experience three lines of detail covering what you built, what you decided, and what came out of it. Detailed bullets raise what an interviewer expects from you before the conversation starts.
4. Research Citi's recent deals: Read past the headline transactions into press releases for deals that don't reach the financial press. Bring one you can discuss in depth, so the conversation works whether or not your interviewer covers that sector.
5. Treat the HireVue as a scored round: Ask classmates and upperclassmen what questions they were asked, then practice those answers on camera before you record.
6. Prepare for coffee chats as carefully as interviews: Most networking with Citi bankers happens through informal calls that carry no formal evaluation, and they're how senior bankers decide whose resume to flag to HR. Open with their deal work and career path, then let the conversation move to interests outside the job. Bankers are assessing whether they'd want you on their team through a demanding deal timeline.
7. Run mock interviews in both styles: Prepare for a relaxed conversational interviewer and a fast technical one, since you can't predict which you'll get. Run mock interviews against both, and book an expert coach for feedback from someone who has conducted these interviews.

About the Citigroup IB summer analyst role

Citi IB summer analysts support a single coverage or product group for roughly 10 weeks, building the analysis and materials that group runs on. Your work depends on whether you're placed in a product group like M&A or in sector coverage.

Summer analysts typically split their time between pitches and live deals:

• Live deal work: Operating models, DCFs, LBOs, and accretion/dilution analysis, plus CIMs and other deal documents, concentrated in M&A and other product groups
• Sector comparables: Trading and transaction comps pulled from FactSet or CapIQ, built and maintained by coverage teams
• Pitch work: Pitch decks, management presentations, and board materials, with comps and sometimes modeling built to support them. Pitching takes up much of the work in coverage groups.
• Deal administration: Fee runs, engagement letter drafts, and support on NDA and KYC workstreams

Citi places summer analysts across New York, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Groups outside New York, including Houston energy and Los Angeles metals and mining, run their own interview processes.

Citi is several years into its largest restructuring in decades under CEO Jane Fraser, including roughly 20,000 job cuts announced in 2024 and management layers reduced from 13 to 8. Expect interviewers to test whether you understand where the bank is heading, not only what it does today.

Additional resources

• Investment banking interview prep course
• IB Fast Track
• Enterprise value vs. equity value
• Investment banking interview prep guide
• "Why Citigroup?" interview question guide
• "Why investment banking?" interview question guide
• Citigroup interview questions
• Citigroup IB interview questions

FAQs about the Citigroup IB summer analyst interview

How does Citigroup's Early ID Leadership Program work?

Citi's Early ID Leadership Program accelerates sophomores into the IB summer analyst interview process before the main pool opens. Recent cycles have run twice a year, with fall applications opening in October and spring applications opening in February, and Citi asks for a 3.3 GPA across all majors. The three-to-five-week virtual program pairs you with a Citi mentor for behavioral prep, technical concepts, and mock interviews. Completing it moves you into an accelerated interview, either a Superday directly or a compressed first round, ahead of the general timeline.

Does going to a non-target school hurt your chances at Citi investment banking?

Coming from a non-target school makes the path into Citi investment banking harder, but it doesn't rule you out. Citi staffs dedicated recruiting teams at its target schools, and those teams decide collectively which students get interviews. Bankers can ask to represent a campus they didn't attend, so the banker you meet at an event may have no alumni tie to your school and no reason to weigh it. Through the standard application channel, the leverage that moves your resume comes from directors, MDs, or VPs flagging it to HR, since analyst and associate referrals carry less weight.

What GPA do you need for Citi investment banking?

Citi's IB summer analyst postings state a preferred GPA of 3.5 or above, and reported medians for accepted candidates sit closer to 3.6. Interviewers read GPA against your major, with an informal bar nearer 3.8 for business majors and around 3.6 for STEM majors like engineering or computer science. A strong referral or standout experience can offset a lighter GPA, so plan around those numbers as working floors rather than hard cutoffs.

How long is the Citigroup IB summer analyst Superday?

Citi's IB summer analyst Superday runs about 90 minutes across three back-to-back 30-minute Zoom breakout rooms. One room covers behavioral questions, one covers technical questions, and the third mixes both and can lean toward markets. At least one room includes a managing director, with directors and VPs staffing the others, and each room submits its own scores and a written offer recommendation to HR.

Does Citi's investment banking Superday include a case study?

Citi's IB summer analyst Superday doesn't include a case study. The three rooms cover behavioral questions, technical questions, and a mix of both. Case studies do appear elsewhere at Citi, including Corporate Banking Superdays and the Early ID Leadership Program, so accounts of the format vary depending on which process someone went through. Confirm the format with your recruiter when your Superday logistics arrive.

What percentage of Superday candidates get an offer?

Citi doesn't publish Superday conversion rates. Bulge bracket Superday offer rates commonly fall between 30% and 40%, though the figure varies widely by bank, group, and cycle. Citi's front-office acceptance rate sits below 3% across roughly 50,000 applications, so reaching a Superday already puts you through the steepest cut.

What groups does Citi's IB summer analyst program cover?

Citi's IB summer analyst program covers groups across New York, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. New York houses most coverage groups, including M&A, Tech, Media & Communications, Industrials, Financial Sponsors, Healthcare, Consumer & Retail, FIG, Real Estate, Power Utilities & Renewables, and LATAM. Regional offices cover energy in Houston, metals and mining in Los Angeles, industrials in Chicago, and tech on the West Coast. Groups outside New York run their own interview processes.

How much does a Citigroup investment banking summer analyst make?

Citi pays IB summer analysts a prorated share of the first-year analyst base across the 10-week program, and the figures sit in line with the other bulge bracket banks. Here's what Citi investment banking analysts report earning:

• Summer analyst: ~$2,115 per week over 10 weeks, plus a $4,000 housing stipend and typically no bonus
• First-year analyst: ~$110K base plus a $10K signing bonus and a $35K to $55K year-end bonus

Base salaries hold steady year to year, while bonuses move with deal volume.