<p>Hmmm, that’s odd. As an undergraduate in Course 3, I’ve come to understand an M.S. degree from MIT Materials Science & Engineering as a consolation prize for students who don’t finish their Ph.D’s. In this way, the student walks away with more than nothing and the graduate program can maintain the statistic of 100% graduation. I’ve also understood this to be the policy of many other MIT science and engineering departments. I may be misinformed, but I can say that all of my graduate TA’s have been PhD students and I haven’t run into a single Masters student in the department.</p>