- April 10, 2026
- 4 min read
The 3 courses you need to do before your MBA | Business Fundamentals
As you get MBA-ready, these three courses can help you master core business concepts and overcome your knowledge gaps—before your program begins
Business Fundamentals is a series of micro-courses we've designed to help you prepare for business school ©envato
Enrolling at business school can help you level up your skillset, access elite networking opportunities, and strengthen your career, but these benefits come paired with a rigorous learning experience and demanding curriculum.
Preparation is essential to hit the ground running, ensuring you can not only cope but also make the most out of the experience. To help, we’ve teamed up with prep organization Kaplan to offer Business Fundamentals, a series of micro-courses designed to enhance your readiness for the challenges of business school, and to help ease some of the pressure.
Business Fundamentals includes three courses—Accounting, Finance, and Statistics—that will build your understanding of key business concepts, giving you an advantage whether you’re in the pre-application phase or already enrolled. Completing these courses can instill confidence—both in yourself and in your target schools—that you can master core business principles.
Authored and reviewed by faculty from top business schools such as UCLA Anderson, UT-Austin, Emory Goizueta, and the University of Chicago Booth, these courses will give you a strong starting point as you enter the classroom.
Business Fundamentals courses are self-paced, featuring bite-sized content accessible 24/7 via desktop and mobile. Each module includes a mixture of lectures, short quizzes, exercises, and answer explanations.
Here we take a closer look at each Business Fundamentals course to highlight the key concepts you'll learn, ensuring you are fully prepared when you start.
1. Statistics Fundamentals
Statistics is an essential subject for business school students, helping reveal how to make sense of data for effective decision-making. In this course, students explore the fundamentals of descriptive and inferential statistics, understanding how these concepts inform business strategy. Course participants also gain experience using Excel to analyze, summarize, and leverage spreadsheets—a critical skill for any business career.
Key topics covered include Descriptive Statistics, Randomization, Sampling and Experiments, and Probability Theory.
Through these sections, students learn the basics of data analysis, how to display data to guide business decisions, and how to employ appropriate sampling techniques. Statistics Fundamentals also provides insights into probability theory and the normal distribution model, as well as experience working with randomness in statistical calculations while evaluating and critiquing business case studies using statistical tools.
2. Accounting Fundamentals
The Accounting Fundamentals course introduces students to the language of business, equipping them with the tools to understand and assess a company’s finances. This course covers the purpose and process of analyzing financial statements, which help tell the story and history of a business. By analyzing these statements, students build a comprehensive understanding of accounting, learn the steps involved in accounting record keeping, and determine a company’s financial strength.
The course is composed of assessments, written material, rich media, and application-based practice, all designed to enhance students' skills in the field of accounting. By the end of Accounting Fundamentals, students will be able to identify the purpose of the four financial statements and understand how decisions are derived from them.
3. Finance Fundamentals
In the Finance Fundamentals course, students are introduced to the world of corporate finance. Participants explore essential concepts such as the time value of money, measuring business performance, and understanding debt and equity, all while learning how managers value businesses.
This course provides a comprehensive overview of managerial finance in the corporate landscape, covering everything from financial analysis of business performance to how businesses raise capital, manage debt, and build equity. The combination of high-quality assessments builds students' intuition and comfort with corporate finance.
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Business Fundamentals will help you gain a competitive edge and set yourself up for success in business school.
“Business Fundamentals gives incoming MBA students an advantage by covering the essential concepts and materials needed," says Jim Compasano, associate teaching professor of finance, Northeastern University.
Laura Wise is a former writer at GMAC where she specialized in writing about the global business education market. Laura earned a B.A. in English Literature, American Novel from the University of Edinburgh and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University – Graduate School of Journalism.
