STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) is the most heavily funded scholarship category in Canada. Corporate tech recruiters, professional engineering societies, federal research councils, and individual universities each run STEM-specific awards that stack on top of generic merit and need-based funding. A serious STEM student can apply to 15 to 20 STEM-specific scholarships in Grade 12, and then keep applying to research-stream awards every summer through undergrad.
Who this page is for
You’re a Canadian student pursuing a STEM field, engineering, computer science, math, physics, chemistry, biology, environmental science, data science, biomedical sciences, or similar. High school students planning STEM undergrad. Undergrads in STEM. Graduate students in STEM research.
The STEM scholarship layers
- Entrance-level merit awards, STEM-specific. Schulich Leader Scholarships pay $100,000 for science, tech, or math, and $120,000 for engineering (equal instalments over four years, renewal-conditional). 100 awarded per year across Canada’s 20+ partner universities, the single largest STEM-specific entrance award. Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation (CEMF) awards for women in engineering. Actua Scholarship. SHAD Canada entrance programs.
- Corporate tech programs. Google Lime Scholarship (for students with disabilities in CS), Google Women Techmakers Scholars, Microsoft Diversity Tech Scholarship, Shopify Build a Business + Dev Degree partnerships, Amazon Future Engineer, IBM Masters Fellowship. Most have Canadian eligibility.
- Research stream (undergrad into grad). NSERC USRA (Undergraduate Student Research Award): a base $6,000 from NSERC plus a mandatory supervisor/department top-up that varies by institution ($1,500 to $3,000+). Total award typically $7,500 to $9,000+ for a 14-to-16-week summer research placement in a STEM lab. Every STEM department at every Canadian research university administers these. Apply in January or February for that summer. Mitacs Globalink Research Internship is the corresponding international research exchange for undergrads.
- Graduate-level STEM research. NSERC CGS-M and CGS-D (Canada Graduate Scholarships at Master’s and Doctoral levels). Alexander Graham Bell CGS. Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (PhD). See the graduate hub for full coverage.
- Professional + association awards. Professional Engineers of Ontario, Order of Ingénieurs du Québec, and every provincial engineering regulator run scholarships. Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS), Chemical Institute of Canada, Canadian Mathematical Society, all run field-specific awards.
- Women + underrepresented in STEM. Schulich Leaders reserves half its awards for women. CEMF awards are women-only. Actua’s TELUS Women-in-Tech program. Girls Who Code scholarships. Technovation. Plus most universities have women-in-engineering entrance scholarships (UBC, Waterloo, Queen’s, McGill).
The Schulich Leader math
Schulich Leaders gets its own section because it’s the biggest single STEM scholarship in Canada and the mechanics catch most students off guard:
- You’re nominated by your high school, not a direct application. Each high school can nominate a fixed number of students.
- The scholarship goes to the school, which applies it to tuition + fees at one of 20+ partner universities across Canada (Waterloo, Toronto, McGill, UBC, etc.).
- Engineering stream: $120,000 over four years ($30,000/year). Science / Tech / Math stream: $100,000 over four years ($25,000/year).
- Grade 12 nomination deadlines, check with your guidance office early in the fall. Schools with no nominated student that year can cost their top candidate six figures.
If you’re in Grade 11 and aiming for STEM, ask your guidance counsellor what the school’s Schulich Leaders process looks like. If the answer is “we don’t do that”, ask them to start.
What our directory lists
Below: scholarships in our directory tagged as STEM-eligible (fieldsOfStudy includes STEM disciplines, OR audience filter captures STEM-signalling tags). For women-specific STEM awards, the “Women in STEM” guide (linked below) covers ~40 programs in detail.