Updated September 2026 · 10 min read · US multinational investment bank
Search for "Morgan Stanley assessment" and you will find confident, specific claims: which provider runs the tests, how many minutes each section takes, how tight the timers are relative to a competitor's. Follow those claims to their source and something interesting happens. One of the two prep sites making them carries a footer disclaiming its own content: nothing on the page "is confirmed or endorsed by Morgan Stanley or any test publisher, and it should not be relied on as a definitive statement of Morgan Stanley's current process."
That is honest of them, and it is the correct framing for this whole topic. Morgan Stanley names no assessment provider anywhere, publishes no test durations, and gives an ordered selection process for only one of its many programmes.
This guide therefore does something slightly unusual: it separates the small amount Morgan Stanley actually says from the large amount everyone else says, and tells you which is which. That distinction is worth more to you than a confidently invented timing.
The one programme with a published process is the Financial Advisor Associate Program, and Morgan Stanley sets it out in four numbered phases:
Phase 1. "Candidate completes employment application, submits resume and completes two online assessments."
Phase 2. Talent Acquisition reviews the application and assessment results, then conducts a phone screen.
Phase 3. Local management conducts face-to-face interviews, followed by a business plan exercise, which is reviewed, followed by a further round of in-person interviews.
Phase 4. Local management makes a final evaluation; the offer is contingent on a background check.
Morgan Stanley is unusually candid about why: "We intentionally created a challenging process to enhance the likelihood of long-term success for each Financial Advisor."
The business plan exercise is the most distinctive named stage in this entire series. It is a written strategic document, reviewed by the firm, sitting between two rounds of in-person interviews. It is not a psychometric test and you cannot practise it with an aptitude app.
For graduate, analyst and front-office roles, Morgan Stanley publishes no ordered stage list at all. Its students and graduates hub, its EMEA early-insight FAQ and its interview-preparation page contain no process description. The interview-preparation page offers one format statement — "Interviews could be competency, strengths based, skills based or technical" — and structures its advice around four themes: Your Story, Your Personal Brand, Your Interests, and Our Firm and Industry.
The reconstructed funnel, assembled from candidate reports rather than from Morgan Stanley, runs: application, online assessment, pre-recorded video interview, one or more live interviews, then a superday of multiple back-to-back rounds.
Here is the complete list of what Morgan Stanley says about its own assessments:
That is everything.
Third-party consensus — which you should treat as informed guesswork — holds that graduate and front-office candidates face numerical reasoning and situational judgement, with verbal, logical or inductive components added by role, plus the pre-recorded behavioural video. Technology candidates face a coding assessment.
The technology track is the best-evidenced part of the process, because candidates describe it consistently: an online coding assessment covering data structures and algorithms, then technical interviews on data structures, algorithms, object-oriented programming and computer-science fundamentals, then a superday. One third-party technology-careers source states the coding assessment applies to new graduates only, with experienced engineering hires starting at the recruiter screen and skipping the online test — plausible, and consistent with candidate reports, but unverified.
Online assessments — provider not confirmed, and sources conflict. Two prep sites attribute Morgan Stanley's tests to either SHL or Aon's cut-e, without agreeing which applies where, and without any confirmation from Morgan Stanley or from either publisher. One of those sites explicitly disclaims its own attribution. Claims that one publisher's timers are tighter than the other's appear without any actual time limits attached. Treat the whole attribution as unsubstantiated.
Pre-recorded video interview — HireVue, candidate-reported only. Multiple Glassdoor accounts name HireVue, including a Summer Analyst in Tokyo in July 2026 who described a "video interview conducted on HireVue." Morgan Stanley does not name it, and Morgan Stanley does not appear on HireVue's own customer page.
Coding assessment — HackerRank, third-party claim only. Candidate reports confirm a coding test exists for technology roles but do not consistently name the platform. No evidence was found for CodeSignal at Morgan Stanley.
Not verified at any stage: Watson Glaser, Pymetrics, Arctic Shores, Cappfinity, Sova, Test Partnership, Revelian, Criteria, Korn Ferry.
Wealth management — Financial Advisor Associate. Completely separate, and the only officially published funnel. Two online assessments, phone screen, in-person interviews, business plan exercise, more interviews, final evaluation. Nothing else at the firm looks like this.
Technology. Coding assessment for new graduates, recruiter screen, technical phone screen, then a superday of multiple rounds. Third-party sources distinguish strats roles — where probability and expected-value questions mix with coding — and e-trading technology, which skews towards systems and concurrency. Experienced engineering hires reportedly skip the online assessment.
Front-office investment banking and sales & trading. Video interview, then superday. No coding component.
EMEA graduate hiring. An assessment centre exists, evidenced by a 2023 student account describing networking at one, but Morgan Stanley publishes nothing about its structure. Its EMEA FAQ covers only academic criteria — "strong A-Level (or equivalent) results and a degree from a good university," and "we recruit candidates from across all academic disciplines."
Morgan Stanley publishes no sample questions of any kind. What follows are original practice items matching the formats candidates describe. They are not Morgan Stanley questions.
Numerical reasoning practice.
A fund's assets under management were $8.4bn at the start of the year. Net inflows over the year totalled $620m, and market performance added 7.5% to the average asset base. Fees are charged at 65 basis points on closing AUM.
Which additional piece of information would you most need to calculate fee revenue accurately? (a) The timing of the net inflows through the year (b) The fund's benchmark index (c) The number of underlying holdings (d) The prior year's fee revenue
The point being practised is recognising that "average asset base" and "closing AUM" are different quantities, and that inflow timing determines the relationship between them. Financial-services numerical items reward candidates who notice which number a calculation actually requires.
Coding practice, for technology candidates.
Given a stream of trade records, each with a timestamp and a value, implement a structure that returns the maximum value seen in the last N seconds, with each query running in better than linear time in the number of records.
Before coding: state your data structure choice and why, name the complexity of insert and query, and identify what happens when the window is empty. Superday technical rounds at Morgan Stanley are reported to cover data structures, algorithms and OOP fundamentals, and narrating your choices is as much of the assessment as the code.
Situational judgement practice.
You are staffed on a client deliverable due tomorrow morning. You spot an error in an analysis a colleague completed last week that is now embedded in the model. Correcting it will change the headline number materially, and your colleague has already left for the day.
Rank these from most to least effective:
Video interview practice.
Morgan Stanley's own preparation framework names four areas. Prepare an answer for each, 2 minutes long: Your Story, Your Personal Brand, Your Interests, and Our Firm and Industry. The last one is where most candidates are weakest and where the firm's own page puts most emphasis.
The fullest single account comes from Glassdoor in July 2026, a Summer Analyst in Tokyo who laid out the whole sequence: a "video interview conducted on HireVue," then an "online coding test," then an "online interview consisting of behavioral and technical," then a "Superday consisting of multiple interview rounds."
A Summer Analyst in February 2026 described something that is worth noting carefully: "they provide the online assessment link to all the people," followed by a Zoom interview with HR and then a superday. If the online assessment is issued universally rather than used as a first-pass filter, that changes how much weight to place on it — but it is one candidate's impression, not a policy statement.
Technology candidates describe the superday consistently. One in November 2025: "Super day consists of 2 Technicals and 1 behavioural interview. Test Data Structure & Algo and CS fundamentals," and they characterised the process as "straightforward" with interviewers who were "nice." Another in October 2025 reported two consecutive 45-minute interviews covering "technical questions about OOP and software development concepts as well as some behavioral," and called it "overall smooth interview process and fair."
The most useful counterweight to those calm accounts comes from Budapest in November 2025, where a Technology Analyst described a final interview running roughly 4 hours across cultural fit, team, technical and HR components — at the end of a process that had taken 10 months from application.
Glassdoor's aggregate puts Morgan Stanley's average process at around 28 days. Set that against the Budapest account and you have the honest picture: a fast median with a very long tail.
After the online assessment, Morgan Stanley publishes no score, band or threshold, and does not say whether it screens or is simply collected.
After the video interview, successful candidates typically move to one or more live interviews.
After those, the superday — multiple back-to-back rounds, typically a mix of technical and behavioural for technology roles, and behavioural and market-focused for front office. Third-party accounts of EMEA assessment centres describe a half-day format with one to three interviews of roughly 45 minutes, an individual presentation and a group exercise, but this is not officially confirmed.
For the Financial Advisor programme, Phase 3 places the business plan exercise between two rounds of in-person interviews, and Phase 4 is a final local-management evaluation with a background check.
Do not calibrate to unverified timings. Every duration you will see quoted for Morgan Stanley's online assessments comes from a prep site, and one of those sites disclaims its own content. Practise numerical and logical reasoning to a general standard of fluency rather than optimising for a time limit nobody has confirmed.
Prepare against Morgan Stanley's own four themes. Your Story, Your Personal Brand, Your Interests, and Our Firm and Industry. This is the firm's published framework and almost nobody uses it, because it is easier to find a list of case questions than to build four coherent narratives. The last theme in particular rewards genuine reading about the firm's business mix.
Expect the video interview. Morgan Stanley states that more roles across North America and Asia now require it. Practise to camera, check your setup in advance, and read the rules in your invitation — the firm defers to the platform on time limits and retakes rather than publishing its own.
For technology roles, drill the fundamentals rather than exotic problems. Candidate reports describe data structures, algorithms, OOP and CS fundamentals, with problems ranging from easy to medium. Fluency and clear narration beat obscure coverage.
Prepare for a superday as a whole day. Multiple consecutive rounds, and at least one reported case of roughly 4 hours. Energy management across rounds is a real variable, and the fourth interviewer gets the same version of you as the first.
If you are applying to the Financial Advisor programme, prepare the business plan seriously. It is a reviewed document, it sits between two interview rounds, and it is the stage that most distinguishes this programme. Morgan Stanley says the difficulty is deliberate.
Plan for a long process. The median is around a month, but a 10-month account exists. Do not treat silence as a decision.
Morgan Stanley names none. Two prep sites attribute its assessments to SHL or Aon's cut-e without agreeing which, and one of those sites explicitly disclaims its own claim. Neither publisher confirms Morgan Stanley as a client.
Candidate reports consistently name HireVue for the pre-recorded video interview, including a Summer Analyst in Tokyo in July 2026. Morgan Stanley does not name the platform and does not appear on HireVue's customer page.
Unknown. Morgan Stanley publishes no durations. Every timing circulating online comes from third-party sources without confirmation.
Morgan Stanley confirms that Phase 1 includes two online assessments but does not say what they test, who supplies them or how long they take.
A written business plan that Morgan Stanley reviews as part of Phase 3 of the Financial Advisor Associate Program, sitting between face-to-face interviews with local management and a further interview round.
Multiple back-to-back interview rounds. Technology candidates report roughly two technical rounds plus one behavioural, covering data structures, algorithms and OOP. One candidate in Budapest reported a final interview of around 4 hours.
Not everyone, but increasingly many. Its own page states that more roles, including those in its North America and Asia offices, now require the pre-recorded video tool as part of application and screening.
Glassdoor's aggregate suggests around 28 days on average, but one Technology Analyst in Budapest reported roughly 10 months from application to final interview.
Yes. Technology candidates take a coding assessment — reportedly new graduates only — followed by technical interviews. Front-office candidates go from video interview to superday with no coding component.
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