Courses

Real college courses.
Free or low cost.

Start with the one nobody tells Marin students about: you can take actual College of Marin classes, for free, while you're still in high school. After that, the open courseware from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley is worth your time too.

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College of Marin: free college credit while you're in high school

Everything else on this page teaches you something. This one puts credit on a real college transcript. College of Marin's College Credit Program, called Jumpstart, lets high school students enroll at no cost per unit. You earn college credit toward a degree, or use it to test out whether a field actually interests you before committing to a major.

Late afternoon classes are scheduled specifically to work around a high school day, at the Kentfield and Indian Valley campuses. Unlike an AP course, where credit depends on one exam score, a college course transfers as long as you pass it.

No cost per unit Real transferable credit Kentfield & Indian Valley Late afternoon classes Marin County

Two things worth knowing. Students below 9th grade can be admitted with a recommendation from their school principal, so this is not strictly a high school program. And this is real college work that goes on a permanent transcript, so take one class first and see how it fits before you load up.

College of Marin Jumpstart →

How I think about this

Here's what I've learned: listing courses on an application doesn't impress anyone. What matters is what you did with what you learned. One course, done deeply, with a real project at the end, is worth more than ten certificates sitting in a folder.

Step 1
Go deep, not wide
Take one or two challenging courses. Finish them. Do every problem set.
Step 2
Build something
An app, a research summary, a presentation, a teaching project, a club initiative.
Step 3
Show impact
Who used it? Who learned from it? Did it solve a problem? That's the part that counts.
Strong: "Completed Harvard CS50, then built a study app used by 40 students at my school"
Weak: "Completed 10 online courses"

Most rigorous

College-level workload, real problem sets, no hand-holding

MIT OpenCourseWare

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thousands of full courses with lectures, notes, and exams. The original open courseware platform. Genuine MIT-level rigor, completely self-paced, no registration.
College Free Most rigorous
Take one course and treat it like a real class. Notes, problem sets, consistency. That's what makes it count.
Visit MIT OCW

Harvard University (HarvardX)

Harvard University
Hundreds of free courses. CS50, their intro to computer science, is one of the most widely respected online courses anywhere. Also strong in biology, data science, and public health.
College Free to audit Most rigorous
CS50 is the one to start with. Certificate pricing varies by course, so check before assuming you need to pay.
Browse Harvard courses

Stanford Online

Stanford University
Strong in AI, engineering, and medicine. A mix of lecture-style and structured courses, including some of the best machine learning material available anywhere.
Advanced STEM Free / Paid options Most rigorous
Choose courses tied to something you actually want to build. Their AI material is demanding but worth it.
Visit Stanford Online

edX

Founded by Harvard and MIT
Thousands of courses from Harvard, Berkeley, Georgia Tech, and more. Free to learn everything, with optional paid certificates. Large STEM catalog.
College Free audit / paid cert Most rigorous
A certificate is worth something only if it's tied to a project you actually built. The audit track teaches you the same material.
Visit edX

Coursera

Stanford, Google, IBM, and others
Very strong in data science, AI, and healthcare. Free audit available for most courses. Also hosts industry certificates from companies like Google.
College + industry Free audit / paid cert Moderate rigor
Best when the certificate matches a skill you actually use for something. Otherwise audit it and skip the fee.
Visit Coursera

Skill builders

Best paired with a project you finish

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative

Carnegie Mellon University
More interactive than MIT OCW, with built-in assessments and feedback rather than just recorded lectures. Good for math, statistics, and data science.
College Mostly free Moderate rigor
The interactive format is better for building real understanding than watching lectures alone.
Visit CMU OLI

Georgia Institute of Technology

Georgia Tech, via edX
Heavy STEM focus, particularly engineering and computer science. Search their courses through the edX catalog.
Engineering + CS Free / paid cert Moderate rigor
Find Georgia Tech on edX

UC Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley
Full lecture series available publicly. Heavy STEM focus in EECS, physics, and data science. Some of the best computer science lectures online, and the campus is 40 minutes from Marin if you ever want to visit.
Advanced STEM Free / paid cert Moderate rigor
Courses alone don't demonstrate much. What you build with the skills does: a GitHub portfolio, an app, a research summary, teaching someone else.
Find Berkeley on edX

Exploration

For finding out what interests you, especially grades 8 to 10

Open Yale Courses

Yale University
Full lecture series with transcripts. Strong in physics, biology, chemistry, and economics. No login required, fully open, and unusually well produced.
College Free Exploration
Visit Open Yale Courses

OpenLearn

The Open University, UK
Large free course library, more structured than MIT OCW. Good for building a foundation before tackling something harder.
Intro to intermediate Free Exploration
Visit OpenLearn

FutureLearn

UK and European universities
More discussion-based format than most. Strong UK and European university content, useful for seeing how a subject is taught somewhere else.
Mixed Free / paid upgrades Exploration
Visit FutureLearn

NPTEL

Indian Institutes of Technology
IIT-level engineering courses. Very strong technical content, especially engineering and applied sciences, and almost nobody in the US knows about it.
College engineering Free Exploration
Visit NPTEL

Course finder tools

For searching across all the platforms at once

Class Central

Indexes free courses from universities worldwide and lets you filter by subject, university, and level. The best single search tool for finding open courses across platforms.
Free Search tool
Visit Class Central
External site, searches across all platforms

Open Culture

A curated, hand-maintained list of free university courses. Well organized and good for browsing when you don't know what you're looking for yet.
Free Browse tool
Visit Open Culture
External site, curated course directory

Quick guide: what to choose based on your goal

Earn credit that actually countsCollege of Marin Jumpstart
Take on real academic difficultyMIT OCW, Harvard, Stanford
Build a skill you'll useedX, Coursera, Carnegie Mellon
Find out what you likeYale, OpenLearn, FutureLearn
Search across everythingClass Central, Open Culture
Courses don't get you anywhere by themselves. What you do with them does.
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