My Experience at Harvard Business School
Well I’m officially a Harvard Business School graduate…kind of. Today, I took my final exam for the HBX CORe (Credential of Readiness) program. The HBX CORe program is an online certification program designed to teach you the language of business. The program is composed of three courses — Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, and Financial Accounting. It is offered by Harvard Business School and has actual Harvard Business School professors teaching the course content. There are anywhere between 250–400 participants in each cohort. Cohorts start regularly throughout the semester and can vary between 8–12 weeks, depending on desired acceleration of content.
As I complete my 10 week program, I am extremely satisfied with my experience. 10/10 would recommend to a friend. In fact, here’s the top 5 reasons why I would recommend you enrolling in this program.
- Engaging Professors — Real professors from the Harvard Business School who do a phenomenal job of teaching the content. I am not good at accounting…at all. My knowledge of business analytics was slim and let’s not even mention economics. These three professors really understood the content and knew how to engage the course participants throughout the entire program. You often times will find them casually chatting in your private Facebook group with the rest of your cohort.
- Online Experience — I’ve taken online classes before. In fact, I took one semester of nothing BUT online classes. This experience was unlike any others. I expect nothing less than top notch quality from Harvard. The interface was clean, easy to navigate and free of errors. In other online experiences, I recall too many times where I would type an entire essay and press submit just for the system to tell me it crashed.
- Learning Methods — Whether you learn by listening, reading, or actually doing, there’s something for everyone throughout these modules. Each course does a good job at providing a happy balance between lectures, real world examples and actual practice. They also bring in some incredible guest lecturers, like the CEO of Bonobos for example.
- Grading Scale — The grading scale is reasonable and it makes sense for an online community. A significant portion of your grade is dependent on your engagement and interaction with other classmates. The biggest disadvantage of online education is not creating a community amongst peers where you feel comfortable reaching out for help. Since your grade depends on it, you’ll actually feel like you are part of a community of peers who want to help you actually understand the content. The grading scale also factors in the quiz scores throughout the program and your final exam.
- HBX Live — Holy. Crap. I can’t speak highly enough of this experience. In order to fully understand why I am giddy over this, you’ll have to watch the video below. This is the future of online education and I got to participate in this experience.
So why did I choose to enroll in this program? I enjoy marketing and branding. Financial accounting and business analytics have nothing to do with digital media and graphic design… One day, when I’m sitting across the table from other chief officers, I’d like to understand what everyone else is talking about. When the CFO starts talking about income statements, balance sheets, financial forecasting and how we use concepts of materiality, historical cost and consistency principles, I’m going to know what he means. When our economist comes in to talk about willingness to pay, supply and demand curves, and relative cost analyses, I’m going to be able to join into the conversation.
Life is about the never-ending pursuit of knowledge. These last 10 weeks were challenging. Looking back, I’m so glad I said “yes” to this opportunity.
