Money for College
Scholarships Marin students can actually get.
Every award on this page has been checked against the organization that runs it, not against a scholarship search site. None of them charge a fee to apply. If a deadline has passed, the month it reopens is listed instead.
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10,000 Degrees: one application, dozens of scholarships
If you do one thing on this page, do this one. 10,000 Degrees was founded in 1981 as the Marin Education Fund and now works inside all 12 Marin public high schools and College of Marin. They administer scholarship funds on behalf of many local donors, including the Asian Scholarship Fund.
Submitting their single application automatically enters you for every scholarship they administer that you qualify for. You do not hunt for them individually. There is also no GPA requirement, which is unusual and worth knowing if your grades do not reflect what you can do.
Opens October 15
Closes March 2
Up to $1,500 per year
No GPA minimum
Financial need required
Open to students who graduated from or live in Marin, Sonoma, San Francisco, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Napa, or Lake counties, and who are working toward a first associate's degree, bachelor's degree, or technical certification.
Go to 10,000 Degrees →
STEM scholarships
For students heading into engineering, computing, environmental science, and related fields
PG&E Better Together STEM Scholarship
The largest STEM award on this page, and almost every Marin household qualifies on the residency test because Marin sits inside PG&E's service territory. You apply as a PG&E customer or as the dependent of one. In 2025 PG&E awarded nearly 150 scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $10,000.
Eligible majors are engineering (electrical, mechanical, industrial, environmental, power and energy), computer science and information systems, cyber security, and environmental sciences. You must plan to enroll full time at a four-year college in California or at an HBCU, pursuing a first undergraduate degree. No GPA requirement.
$1,000 to $10,000
Jan 12 to Mar 12
HS seniors and up
Marin qualifies
AOPA Foundation Flight Training Scholarships
The best-value aviation award on this page. At least 90 scholarships of $10,000 or more go to students aged 16-18 each year toward a private pilot certificate, funded by the Ray Foundation. Awards across the whole program range from $250 to $14,000, and in early 2026 AOPA gave more than $2 million to nearly 400 people.
Two things make this unusually accessible: high school students get free AOPA membership, and membership is the only entry requirement. And one general application matches you to every scholarship you qualify for, so you are not hunting them down individually. Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
$250 to $14,000
Oct 1 to Dec 30
Apr 1 to Jun 30
Free membership for HS
Women in Aviation International
Closing soon: applications for the 2027 cycle are open now and close September 1, 2026. You must join as a WAI member by August 30 to be eligible, and you may apply for up to three scholarships in one cycle.
The most recent cycle offered over 50 scholarships worth more than $200,000, covering flight training, engineering, maintenance, dispatch, and career advancement. WAI has awarded over $15 million since 1995. Note their own policy: WAI does not consider race, ethnicity, or gender in awarding scholarships, so these are open to everyone. Two letters of recommendation required, online submission only.
They also run Girls in Aviation Day each September, a free event for ages 8-17 held across 21 states.
50+ awards, $200,000+
Closes Sept 1, 2026
Membership required
Apply to 3 at once
Gleda M. Estes Scholarship for Young Women in STEM
A $3,000 award from the National Association of Rocketry for high school seniors and college freshmen majoring in a STEM field. Established by the Estes family, of Estes rockets. You do not need to be a rocketry competitor to apply, though NAR runs several other scholarships on the same date if you are.
$3,000
Deadline June 1
HS seniors, women in STEM
SMART Scholarship-for-Service
Not for high schoolers, but worth knowing about early because it changes how you choose a college major. Full tuition plus an annual stipend between $30,000 and $46,000, summer internships, a mentor, and a guaranteed job after graduation. Undergraduate through doctoral. Aerospace and aeronautical engineering are eligible disciplines, along with many others. Applications run August to December. Run by the U.S. Department of War.
Full tuition + stipend
Aug to Dec
College, not high school
General Marin scholarships
Not STEM-specific. Tuition is tuition.
West Marin Scholarship Program
For seniors from coastal West Marin and Tomales High School. Unusually, it is renewable: continuing scholars reapply each year on an earlier deadline than first-time applicants. Applications open December 15, first-time applicants are due March 1, and continuing scholars are due February 15. Start lining up your recommendation letters as soon as you decide to apply, because they must arrive by the deadline too.
Opens Dec 15, due Mar 1
West Marin and Tomales
Renewable
Marin local
Redwoods Residents Association Scholarship
Up to $4,000 for current high school seniors with financial need who also show academic and leadership strength. Requires a one-page autobiography, two letters of recommendation, and a transcript. Note that this one is old-fashioned: the completed application must be delivered as a hard copy, in person or by mail, to the Redwoods Retirement Community front desk. Typed applications preferred. Deadline has fallen in mid-March.
Up to $4,000
Mid-March
Hard copy only
Marin local
College of Marin Foundation Scholarships
Many scholarships are available to College of Marin students, whether you are incoming, continuing, or transferring out to a four-year school. Worth knowing: College of Marin states that current and future students can apply for general COM scholarships regardless of national origin or immigration status. Their Transfer and Career Center maintains a separate list, though some of those individual awards do require citizenship or permanent residency, so check each one.
Varies
College of Marin students
No status requirement
Marin local
Marin County Retired Employees Scholarship Fund
A narrow one, but if it fits you it fits well. Awards go to students attending or planning to attend a university, college, or trade school, with preference given to graduates of a Marin high school who are descendants of Marin County employees. Held at Marin Community Foundation. If a parent or grandparent worked for the county, this is worth a phone call.
Annual
County employee families
College or trade school
Marin local
How to tell a real scholarship from a fake one
Scholarship scams are common, and they target exactly the families who need the money most. Two rules decide almost every case:
- Never pay to apply. No legitimate scholarship charges an application fee, a processing fee, or a deposit. Not one on this page does.
- The sponsor must exist without the scholarship. A real award comes from a company, foundation, professional society, or community group that does something else for a living. If the organization's only activity is running the scholarship, walk away.
Other things that should stop you: being told you have won an award you never applied for, a guarantee that you will win, being asked for a bank account or Social Security number before any award is confirmed, or a site that wants payment for a scholarship search. Free search tools already exist.
Be careful with scholarship search sites generally. Many are lead-generation businesses that sell your contact information, and some offer their own small "scholarship" as bait to get you to sign up. That is advertising, not aid.
Why this page exists. The Marin County Office of Education has a scholarship resources page. As of August 2026 it was still listing awards with 2023 deadlines. Nobody in this county maintains a current list, so students find out about local money by word of mouth, which means the students with the most connected parents hear about it first. This page is an attempt to fix that, and every entry carries the month it was last checked so you can see how fresh it is.
Know a scholarship I'm missing?
Local scholarships are the hardest thing to find and the easiest thing to miss. If your school, employer, church, club, or service organization offers one, tell me and I will verify it and add it.
Email navigate@marinSTEMnavigator.org