I applied online. Eventually, I was emailed for a phone interview as well as a skills assessment.

The phone interview was with a software developer. It was a pretty informal interview, and he was mainly concerned with what experience I had and what projects I had done.

Then I took the skills assessment, which sucked. It took about three hours, and by the end, I was like, I don't even care if I get the job at this point. I had to buy a webcam and install software which allowed ProctorU to monitor me and remotely control my computer.

The skills assessment was a lot of IQ test-type questions, plus learning a made-up language (pretty easy), followed by 3 or 4 moderately difficult string manipulation programming questions. I wrote them in Java and I remember doing a lot of switch statements.

Apparently, I did okay on the skills assessment, because I received an email saying they wanted to fly me to their headquarters. I flew in the day before and had dinner with an Epic employee. Some other interviewees came as well. She had already decided where we were going. She paid for it though, which was nice.

I should mention that the meals with employees were by far the most awkward parts of the whole interview experience. I had three meals with Epic employees, and it was obvious that 2 of the 3 people I ate with were just doing it to get a free meal. They had no interest in talking with interviewees. I suggest skipping one or both of the dinners so that you can find a place that you actually want to eat, plus you won't have to make small talk with someone who doesn't want to talk to you.

Epic put me up in the Hilton Monona. They give you breakfast vouchers and will pay for room service, which I suggest you take advantage of. I did. The only things they don't cover are booze and pay-per-view.

I had my day of interviews start bright and early at like 8:30 AM. It was all over by about 1 or 2 PM. I rode in a cab with about 5 other interviewees. We all went to a little room where they had some food set out for breakfast. There are food and drinks everywhere.

We had to eat and make small talk with HR until a software developer came in and gave us his spiel about Epic software. They also gave us folders that described some of the past intern projects, which all sounded interesting.

Then I and two other intern interviewees broke off in a group and spoke to an employee who had done the intern program. This wasn't really an interview, just a chance to ask questions. He was wearing jeans and a zip-up hoodie and had earrings in.

I suggest you wear something to the interview that isn't too casual, even though you could get away with it. A polo and nice jeans with running shoes would be the minimum. Almost all of the other interviewees, including myself, were wearing a button-up shirt beneath a sweater.

Then I had my software developer interview followed by my HR interview.

The software dev interview was pretty casual. I told him about my project, he asked a few questions about what design choices I had made, describe the project, would you change anything, etc. Definitely practice giving an overview of your project. I didn't demo the project or give an actual presentation; we just sat in an empty room and talked. There were no technical questions. He talked about his job a lot, and I asked a lot of questions.

The HR interview was pretty relaxed. She asked about my experience, what is one good and bad thing each reference would say about me, what is one misconception people have about me. She was pretty nice though.

Then I and the other 2 interviewees had lunch with a software developer. It was painfully obvious he didn't want to speak to us. The food wasn't as good as they made it out to be. He gave us a brief tour afterward.

I noticed that almost everyone I passed was in their 20s, a sign of high turnover. Nobody I talked to seemed to think work-life balance was a concern, even though people on Glassdoor seemed to think otherwise.

Then we got another tour from a different guy, but this time it was more in-depth. The campus was really massive and elaborate. Then we took a cab back to the hotel, and I just relaxed until dinner time.

Overall, I was very impressed with Epic. In the morning, I took the hotel shuttle to the airport and flew home. 14 days later, I received a call from the HR lady saying they were moving forward with other candidates.

Don't assume that you have the job locked in just because they fly you out there, even though it's an internship! As you can imagine, I'm pretty disappointed, considering the amount of time I put in. I must have said something during the interview that turned them off.

What is one misconception people have about you?

What is one good and bad thing each reference would have to say about you?

If it were two hours later, it would be half as long until midnight as it would be if it were an hour later. What time is it now?