Preparing for my university interview

Hi all.

I have an interview at a university ive applied for and I have to go through an Oral C++ exam. Basically their main c++ lecturer will quiz me on my C++ ability. Being an oral exam i dont think i'll need to solve any problems but maybe explain any C++ concepts and where to use them like Virtual Destructors.

Could you all please just give me a list of what you think id need to know (I know you cant predict the questions but hopefully you can help me prepare).

Also is there any online tutorials or eBooks which will help me understand the concepts of C++ and where they are used etc like Virtual Destructors, templates, OOP etc.

Thanks :-)

Isn't it annoying that teaching institutes seem to always be so uptight, full of ridiculous procedures , and completely off-touch with reality? It's quiet damaging as I see it that on today's society one of the first things we get to hear on our workplace is "But this is not university. Forget all you were taught there."

An oral in C++ is like a written test in singing. But oh well!

A good source is definitely the C++ FAQ at http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/. The way it is organized, how themes are explained and the strong emphasys on standard code coupled with good practices, makes this a good teaching material.

You may also want to try to get hold of two books: Addison Wesley's C++ Coding Standards and a good reference book on C++ and the STL. Unfortunately I cannot give you a name to this one. I'm also looking for it.

Being an oral I reckon they will focus more on good practices, the standards, and program design. They will not worry much with things like "what are the parameters of function...". Typical questions will probably be things like:

Describe a way you could develop a simple calculator.
What is the difference between declaration and definition?
etc..

That second question does display the only benefit I can see from orals. In order to verbally explain certain concepts, it is necessary a good knowledge of the matter. It's easier to write about it, than it is to talk about it.

If you have to take a test to get into college, what do you plan on learning there? Is it like a Graduate School you're entering?

I think you would find something good if you where to look this up in google.

How long to the interview?

If it's only days or a couple of weeks, then you're not going to learn much more, especially if you're asked "how did you use it" type questions.

Hey thanks for the reply Mario-F I shall look into it and hopefully i'll do ok. I agree with you about it being ridiculous because I may not know the answer to their questions however if they gave me a compiler im sure i could code most things they throw at me. But this probably wont come across in the oral.

Oh and as for searching google the reason why I posted here is because I may get replies from people who have been in the same situation. Maybe they had an oral exam during a job interview so could give me their experience.

Oh and it is a graduate course, sorry i should of mentioned that :-)

Hey,

thanks for your reply too salem. It is a week to the interview. However I dont see myself as "learning" new techniques but actually learning how to do techniques im already familiar with in different languages in C++. For example I understand mutex's, tasks, rendezvous, inheritence etc in different languages but not in C++. So im sure i have enough time to learn how to do it in C++ when I already have experience with the techniques but in differnet languages. Hopefully that makes sense lol.

Some popular topics are:
virtual destrutors, copy constructors, assignment operators, spotting bugs in code fragments (dangling pointers, forgetting to delete memory, returning the address of a local variable).

Also, some people like asking about 2-dimensional arrays, so you might want to review that...