Applied Materials Application Engineer interview questions

Initial Aptitude followed by two rounds of Technical and HR. The aptitude consists of questions that involve simple interest, time and some logical questions. After the screening, they shortlisted the candidates and were interviewed for ~1 hour for technical questions. After the technical rounds, we had one HR round which tested the personality and tried to check our answers.

Applied Materials had come to our campus for placement. The first round was an online written test for one hour. All questions were objective. 25 questions on aptitude (number series, probability, time and work etc.) and 25 questions on technical (wide range of topics from physics to optics to electronics to image processing). This was followed by an interview for the shortlisted candidates. This was a negative experience because of the attitude of the interviwers. I am not sure whether it was a strategy to test the candidates reactions to criticism or that they were in a bad mood. Interview lasted around half an hour. They started by asking me to tell something about myself. Then they started asking questions about my thesis. They asked me why I think I would be a good fit for the job profile of application engineering and repeatedly pointed out the areas in my thesis that had nothing to do with the advertised job profile and kept saying that these skills are useless for this job profile. One of the interviwers questions me about a simple notation I had used to describe a structure in my thesis description. Even though I politely pointed out that this notation is correct and widely used, he told me to look at literature and kept insisting that my notation and nomenclature (that was approved by both my advisors and the entire thesis committee) is wrong. I had listed out 4 projects I worked on during my thesis. They pointed it out and said that it looks like 2-3 master's level projects and not a PhD thesis work. It is all fine if it is just an interview strategy to test the candidate's reactions. Otherwise, some of the questions were in poor taste and demonstrated the negative attitude of the interviewers.