Here Are The Top Online Courses You Need To Prepare For Your Master’s Degree

Starting a business master's degree can be intimidating—especially if you’re moving to study abroad. Whether you're uncertain about what you will be learning, concerned about the demanding courses, or unsure about adjusting to a new culture, it always helps to be prepared. 

Luckily for you, there are several online courses business master's candidates can take to feel more confident about starting the business school journey. 

Here are a wide range of online courses that will help you prepare for your master's degree. 

1. LinkedIn Learning courses

There are more than 16,000 LinkedIn Learning courses to choose from, covering anything from coding to communications skills for modern management.  

Many of these courses teach specific skills that you’ll use day-to-day during your business master’s degree through short, easily digestible videos. 

The range of options means you can delve deeper into your business specialization or even a specific course in your master's that you feel intimidated by. 

Here are a few options that can help you prepare. 

- Corporate Finance: Robust Financial Modeling

A master in finance involves numerous technical courses that will be a significant jump from your undergraduate degree, such as advanced financial modelling, quantitative analysis, and data analytics.

Corporate Finance: Robust Financial Modeling is delivered by Joshua Rischin, company director of Axium Solutions—a US software company. The course includes five chapters that deep-dive into understanding financial modelling and how to design, build, and present robust financial models.  

This will prove helpful as many business master's programs include some finance components. 

- Building resilience 

The pressure will ramp up as soon as you start your master's degree, so it's a good idea to develop an ability to work well under pressure. Being able to manage in times of stress and adversity will help you succeed at business school and throughout your career. 

In this LinkedIn Learning course, Kelley School of Business professor and professional communications coach Tatiana Kolovou explains how to deal with difficult situations by building your "resiliency threshold”.

She outlines five training techniques to prepare for difficult situations and five strategies for reflecting on these skills afterward.

- Excel essentials 

For both employees and business owners, Excel is an indispensable tool for completing tasks such as tracking assets, income, debt, and net worth. 

This two-hour Excel Essential Training course equips those preparing for business master's degrees with essential beginner and intermediate Excel knowledge.  

The program is delivered by Dennis Taylor, a spreadsheet expert who has written multiple books and presented more than 500 webinars in Excel. 

- Communication Foundations

Arguably the most important skill you’ll need at business school and in your career is communication. Being able to communicate effectively is crucial to success. It will allow you to collaborate with a team, be an effective leader, and give you the best chance of advancing in your career. 

The one-hour Communication Foundations course is led by Kelley School of Business professors, Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey Hughes. It breaks down the four building blocks of communication—people, message, context, and listening—and how these apply in different circumstances. 

- Project management foundations

Project management is essential for future business leaders. Whether you wish to become a project manager or not, you’ll likely work in group and solo projects during your business school experience that will utilize these skills. 

In this course, Bonnie Biafore—a  project management consultant and author with over 20 years of experience in the industry—dives into the fundamentals. Participants will learn to establish goals, develop plans, and stay on top of workloads.  

- Critical thinking and problem-solving

You will likely face many business challenges during your master’s degree, whether it's a difficult financial model or a disagreement with a peer. Having a basis for how to solve problems will be an invaluable skill when embarking on your master’s. 

Plus, critical thinking and problem solving are considered as some of the most in-demand skills in 2023.

This course is taught by Dr. Eric Zackrison, in association with Made craft. He shows how to critically assess the source of information and determine the right approach to take to tackle a problem, no matter how simple or complex. 

2. edX language courses

If you plan on studying abroad in a country where you don't speak the language, enrolling in a language course is a great idea to prepare for this big change. 

While Duolingo is a good option for informal learning, you should enroll in a more in-depth language course if your goal is to thoroughly grasp the language. 

Founded by Harvard and MIT, edX offers a variety of online language courses that teach English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin, and more. With hundreds of options available worldwide and at any level, these courses can stand you in good stead for navigating the language in a foreign country.

EdX allows you to study at your own pace so you can fit your learning into your schedule alongside any other preparations you might have. 

3. Culturago

If you're planning on studying abroad, language may not be the only barrier you encounter in an unfamiliar country. Understanding cultural differences and what you should expect from your country of study will help you settle in quicker once you get there. 

Culturago is a new tech company that aims to prepare international students for the culture of their study abroad destination through short online courses, such as an introduction to UK culture. The platform provides you with the tools you need to have a more meaningful, immersive experience when you go abroad.

So far, as well as the UK, Culturago's cultural immersion courses cover Spain, South Korea, Japan, and Italy.

Whether you do all a few or just one, these courses will prepare for the adjustment that will come with staring a new, more challenging degree, and help you hit the ground running so you can ensure success.