7 of the best online courses to enhance your MBA skills

If you're enrolling in an MBA soon, signing up for some short prep courses could help you sharpen your essential business skill set, even before you enter the classroom.

Consider where you have less business knowledge or experience, and address these areas to help you start school with confidence.

Aside from the well-known LinkedIn Learning MBA courses, here are seven great online courses that could boost your MBA skills:

1. Essential Public Speaking

Platform: VirtualSpeech

Length: Variable

Cost: $45 (per month)

Public speaking skills are highly sought after in business. You might know your way around a financial spreadsheet or how to strategize but if you struggle to inspire and lead others, you may experience hurdles in a competitive business world.

The Essential Public Speaking course uses AI-enhanced learning to help you tackle anxieties around public speaking, learning the theories behind effective speeches and how to persuade an audience.

Employees at companies such as Facebook, McKinsey, and Pfizer have completed this course. 

2. GMAC and Kaplan’s Business Fundamentals

Platform: Kaplan / GMAC

Length: 16 hours of self-paced lessons (12 months access)

Cost: $199 for three-course bundle;  $99 for individual courses

We at GMAC have paired with Kaplan to create a pre-MBA course in Business Fundamentals. You’ll study three core courses: finance, accounting, and statistics, with quizzes and assessments to test your studies and make sure you’ve nailed the important info ready for your MBA. 

The courses included are all approved by business school professors, so you can rest assured that you’re learning from expertly curated material.

3. How to Build a Startup

Platform: Udacity

Length: 1 month

Cost: Free

Knowing the principles behind how to create a startup should pay dividends when you start your MBA degree as entrepreneurship often features as a key course.

Udacity’s course on How to Build a Startup walks through the customer development process, where you’ll learn how to quickly build and test concepts by collecting market feedback.

Components include History of the Corporation, Revenue Streams, and Product Market Fit.

4. Marketing in a Digital World

Platform: Coursera

Length: 28 hours

Cost: Free (+additional fee to gain a certificate)

If you want to understand how new technologies interact with marketing, this course is for you.

The Marketing in a Digital World course is taught by an instructor from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and covers how digital tools are changing product, promotion, placement, and price in marketing. 

5. How to Build Confidence and a Positive Mindset for Success

Platform: Udemy

Length: 3 hours on-demand video

Cost: location dependent

MBA programs and business school in general can be overwhelming and intensive, so it’s important to try to ensure you’re mentally prepared for the academic rigor of business school—especially if you’ve been out of school for a while. 

Udemy offers a course in building confidence and creating a positive mindset for success to support growth in areas such as learning to feel happier with yourself, changing your mindset, and overcoming self-doubt.

6. Networking Growth Hacks: Take Your Career to the Next Level

Platform: Udemy

Length: 3.5 hours on-demand video

Cost: location dependent 

Another useful pre-MBA course from Udemy, Networking Growth Hacks teaches you how to focus on your networking skills so that you can hit the ground running when you join your program.

Teaching both in-person networking skills as well as social media tips, this course is taught by three business, personal and social media growth experts who say they have taught more than a million students. 

7. Language courses

Platform: duolingo.com

Length: variable

Cost: free or approx. $84 per year for paid version

If you’re studying abroad in a country where you don’t already speak the language, learning some common phrases will help you feel at home faster and make business networking easier. It helps to show you are keen to fit in and even committing to 10 minutes a day to Duolingo can make a real difference to how you interact in your daily life.

When choosing an online course before enrolling in your MBA program, take the time to identify the areas where you believe you would gain the most from additional learning. This proactive approach will greatly benefit you when you begin your MBA journey, as it will provide you with a clear and focused mindset as you join the program.