MENDOCINO CO., 6/5/26 — Amassing a 4.55 GPA while jumping into sports, service and theater vaulted Mendocino High senior Max Oatney to an early admission and a full-tuition aid grant to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Oatney also was selected for a Mendocino Coast Environmental Scholarship.
Katy Pye, who serves on the nonprofit’s selection committee, asked how Max linked a career built from an MIT degree with environmental protection, the mission of the coast’s environmental scholarship program.
“I’m not interested in building better bombers or getting swept up in a mega-corporation.” Oatney said. “I want to develop sustainable systems of movement and explore hybrid-electric plane propulsion. I aim to kick off my own electric aircraft startup and grow it after graduation. I’d also like to help develop improved eco-friendly methods of moving people and goods.”
Oatney’s parents are teachers at the Mendocino K-8 school, and his achievements likely reflect that academic bent. “After school, in my mom’s kindergarten classroom, I used her laptop to invent hovercraft-cars and flying motorcycles, spending hours on tiny details in the engines, windows and cockpits,” Oatney recalled.
As if top academic placement wasn’t enough, Oatney’s interests stretch to improv comedy, music (playing jazz guitar improvisation and composition/recording), radio shows/podcasting, filmmaking, and sports, including baseball and fencing. He also signed up for a year-long plant and soil sciences technical education program. “As a botany student,” said Oatney, “I took on the school’s garden bed, growing bok choy, radishes, succulents and flowers.” He found it “much more demanding” than expected but also very satisfying in the long run.
The nonprofit’s administrator Rod Jones marveled at Oatney’s achievements: “I cannot figure out how he did it. Most people would get tired just trying to manage such a busy schedule.” That schedule is about to become even busier once Oatney lands in Cambridge.