Retrospective Award of Masters Degrees for Part III

Introduction

If you have come to this page to register your interest in attending the celebrations on 30 April 2011, here is a link to the registration form (registering will help the Faculty judge numbers). Also available is a partial list of those who have indicated that they will be attending (based on Faculty, but not College, registrations).

The detailed programme is available here. So that you can plan your day we have also made available a draft timetable for the congregation (your College should be sending you the final version).

Please note that registering with the Faculty is not the same as applying for your retrospective degree. If you had wanted to receive your degree on 30 April 2011 you should have contacted the Praelector at your College by 20 April 2011. If you wish to receive your degree at another congregation or in absentia, you should contact your College as listed here.

Background

Those who passed Part III Mathematics before 1978 received no formal recognition, while those who passed after that date were awarded the Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics. The University has now decided to recognise Part III for what it always has been: i.e. a Masters level course. Students who pass Part III of the Mathematical Tripos now receive a Master of Advanced Studies (MASt) degree if they take Part III as a one-year stand-alone course, or both a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree and a Master of Mathematics (MMath) degree if they successfully complete four years undergraduate study (including Part III).

When the University makes such a change, it will often grant retrospective degrees to those who have taken the same course prior to the change. Part III is no different, hence

  • you are entitled to the MASt if you passed Part III Mathematics as a one-year stand-alone course (at some point since this became possible in 1962);
  • you are entitled to the MMath if you passed Part III Mathematics in 1962 or later and you kept 12 terms of residence; your subject prior to (or after) Part III need not necessarily have been Mathematics.

Unfortunately if you completed Part III either before 1962 or as part of only three years of undergraduate study at Cambridge (e.g. you took the accelerated Mathematical Tripos consisting of Parts IB, II and III), then you are not eligible for the award.

Celebration

To celebrate this change and the award of the Masters degrees, the Faculty and the colleges have chosen the Congregation on 30 April 2011 as an opportunity to invite those who took Part III after 1962 to graduate and receive their retrospective MASt or MMath degree. Your college may well have contacted you separately regarding graduation on that day.

To give those of you returning a chance to meet other mathematicians, reminisce about past glories and perhaps learn a little more about current mathematics in Cambridge, the Faculty of Mathematics would like to invite you to celebrate Mathematics in Cambridge at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences on 30 April 2011. We will have a day of:

  • group photographs (at 10:45 and 16:30).

  • half-hour popular lectures (at 11:00, 11:45, 12:30, 14:15, 15:00 and 15:45);

  • posters and demonstrations of current research and popular mathematics (throughout the day);

  • tours of the CMS (throughout the day) and the Betty and Gordon Moore Library (in the morning);

  • demonstrations in the G.K. Batchelor Laboratory.

We will be open from 10.30 am until 4.30 pm so that you may come either in the morning or the afternoon in order to suit your graduation time and college events (the detailed programme is available here). Light refreshments will be available at the CMS all day.

We hope that you and your guests will be able to join us to celebrate Mathematics in Cambridge at the CMS on 30 April 2011, and look forward to hearing from you. If you intend to join us it would help planning if you registered by filling in the form behind this link. A partial list of those who have indicated that they will be attending is also available (note that this list is based on Faculty, but not College, registrations, so is far from complete).

Graduating

The arrangements for the award of these retrospective degrees remain a matter for your College and you should contact the relevant authority (usually the Praelector) in your College to make arrangements. The College should be the one where you matriculated to enter for Part III.

If you are eligible for the new degrees you may of course decide not to take it at present (but you can change your mind later). You may also elect to take it in absentia (and thus receive the certificate through the post). If you decide to take it in person, your College will send you a list of dates at which it presents students for degrees. A list of congregations is available online, but you should be aware that Colleges do not present students for degrees at all Congregations.