>“And a master's is not considered a failure for those who can't make it to a PhD.” I was in a physics PhD program straight out of undergraduate school. In tha

>“And a master's is not considered a failure for those who can't make it to a PhD.” I was in a physics PhD program straight out of undergraduate school. In that program, at least, the culture very much was that the master's degree was the "failure option". I ended up leaving after one year for personal reasons, and I felt like even more of a failure because I couldn't even get to the "failure option" point. Five years later and even though I'm relatively successful working as a programmer it still bothers me.