Time is changing and so is Java interviews. Gone are the days, when knowing the difference between String and StringBuffer can help you to go through the second round of Interview, questions are becoming more advanced and interviewers are asking more deep questions. When I started my career, questions like Vector vs Array and HashMap vs Hashtable were the most popular ones and just memorizing them gives you a good chance to do well in interviews, but not anymore. Nowadays, you will get questions from the areas where not many Java programmer looks e.g. NIO, patterns, sophisticated unit testing or those which are hard to master e.g. concurrency, algorithms, data structures and coding.