Today I attended Prize Giving at King’s College, London (pictured above). I was invited to attend as the IMA was giving two prizes to mathematics students. One of the students, Janine Walker (pictured below), was in attendance and I was able to meet her and her family afterward the ceremony.

Universities that offer mathematics are able to offer IMA Prizes, generally to two of their graduating students at their discretion. These are often given out based on academic excellence – to the student with the top marks in exams, a project or overall. The Prize is a years membership of the IMA, although I believe it could offer far more to the student terms of prestige. My information suggests the IMA Prizes are offered at something like 74 universities, which is a lot Prizes but relative to the number of graduating mathematics students (something like 5000) this is a small number of graduates with this accolade. The correct wording on a CV could, I believe, produce a very positive effect.

Practice for awarding IMA Prizes varies; at King’s there was an Awards Ceremony (seperate from Graduation) of 45 minutes in which a range of Prizes in Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics were awarded. This was preceded by a tea and coffee reception and followed by a wine and nibbles reception.