Gemology course

Pay in the destination countries

Monthly, in US dollars. Each country is an Imora admission package — open one for that route's fees, language requirement and deadline.

What does the day look like?

Your day is spent at the microscope. You test loose and mounted stones with optical and physical methods to fix species, natural versus synthetic origin, and treatment such as fracture filling, heat, or irradiation. You grade polished diamonds against the 4Cs (Carat, Clarity, Color, Cut) with international master sets, then you write the laboratory identification certificate and the appraisal dossier.

Your tools are a binocular gemological microscope with darkfield illumination, an Abbe refractometer with sodium equivalent light source and contact liquid, a polariscope, a hydrostatic balance, a spectroscope, ultraviolet lamps at long-wave 365 nm and short-wave 254 nm, Raman / FTIR spectrometers for synthetic detection, plus Sarine DiaMension, DiaScan, GIA Labware, OctoNus Helium, and LIMS. About 15% of the day is the romantic part — a rare untreated ruby or emerald in tweezers — and 85% is repetitive melee grading, inclusion plotting, laser inscription checks, and database entry. Retail and trading offices run 40 hours per week. High-volume labs such as GIA, IGI, or HRD Antwerp use structured 8-hour morning and evening shifts, with no on-call and no night shifts.

Where does this lead?