US News & World Report Recommends that Prospective Business Students Try an MOOC
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming increasingly prevalent in online business education. Top business schools are offering or developing online business courses that the general public can take for free or for a nominal fee. Just recently, a contributor for US News & World Report recommended in an article that prospective business school students try an MOOC before going to business school.
“For MBA applicants wondering whether to enroll in a MOOC at one of their target schools, I say go for it,” says Stacy Blackman, the author of the US News & World Report article. “There’s no harm in getting an early taste of the course work to come, and the experience might actually help inform your decision to apply or allow you to reference something concrete about the curriculum in your essays.” Blackman observes that it takes a significant amount of motivation to complete a self-paced course like an MOOC, and a prospective student may impress a business school admissions committee by showing that level of commitment.”
MOOCs also offer an advantage to prospective students coming from different backgrounds. If you don’t have much experience in corporate finance or financial accounting, you can take an online course from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School before taking the class in business school. Harvard Business School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, Stanford Business School, and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business are also offering online classes that can help students get some experience in different subject areas, and see what topics business school courses cover.
However, it’s important to remember that an online course does not give a student the full business school experience. As we discussed in a recent article, academics are concerned that MOOCs will not give students key advantages that come from attending a traditional business school, like networking opportunities and the ability to learn by discussing ideas with classmates.
