Transcript — 0/17 courses · 0/~500 h
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Self-directed · 12 months · Open courses

An MBA you assemble yourself.

Yes, the content of an MBA can be learned from open courses. MIT Sloan, Wharton, NYU Stern, Yale and the IITs/IIMs publish most of the first-year core for free, and a few platforms now attach cheap, proctored certificates to it. What can't be downloaded is the brand, the recruiting pipeline and the cohort. This plan covers the first part properly and substitutes for the second where a substitute exists.

17 courses (13 core + 3 of 6 electives + capstone)~500 hours10 h / weekBase cost ₹0Certificates optional, from ₹1,000

You can replicateThe knowledge, the tools, the habit

  • The full first-year core: accounting, finance, economics, statistics, marketing, operations, strategy, organisational behaviour
  • The frameworks and the spreadsheets — and the vocabulary that lets you use them in a room
  • The case method, if you do one case a week
  • A portfolio of written deliverables that proves the above better than a transcript does

You can't replicateThe signal, the pipeline, the people

  • A school's name on your CV, and the doors it opens automatically
  • Campus recruiting and a 300-person alumni cohort
  • Forced pace, peer pressure, live case discussion with 70 classmates

Partial substitutes: a 2–3 person study pod, a public portfolio of the deliverables below, and the low-cost credentials in the last section.

Before you start

Five rules that make it stick

Most self-taught MBAs fail in month three, not because the material is hard but because nothing forces the work to finish. These rules replace the registrar.

A course ends with an artifact, not a quiz

Every row below has a "Build" column. The course isn't done until that thing exists. Passive watching doesn't count toward the hours.

Type every model yourself

Never open the solution spreadsheet first. Build the NPV model, the CVP model, the DCF from a blank sheet, then compare.

One page, every week

Business school is half writing. Each deliverable is summarised in a one-page memo: situation, analysis, recommendation, risks.

One case, every week

Read, decide, write your recommendation, then find out what the company actually did. Ninety minutes, no exceptions. Sources are in the case section.

Find two other people

A study pod is the closest thing to a cohort. Swap memos, argue cases, negotiate against each other in Term 3. Laurie Pickard's No-Pay MBA documents exactly this route.

The curriculum

Four terms, sequenced

Order matters: accounting before finance, micro before strategy, everything before the capstone. Each row lists one primary course to follow and alternates that cover the same ground — pick one, don't do all. Coursera courses are free in Audit mode (choose it at enrolment; certificates are paid). MIT OpenCourseWare courses are archived snapshots — the fundamentals haven't moved, but some have full video lectures and others only notes and problem sets, so check the menu on each course page. Saylor courses are free and include a free certificate of completion.

T1

Foundations: the language of business

Months 1–3
≈110 h
DoneCourseHoursWhat you build

Introduction to Financial Accounting

Wharton · Coursera · audit free

Alternates: MIT 15.501 Financial & Managerial Accounting/Saylor BUS103 (free certificate)/Damodaran Accounting 101 (short refresher)

 30 h Take one listed company's annual report and rebuild its three statements in a spreadsheet, compute ten ratios, and write one page on what the numbers say.

Economic Analysis for Business Decisions

MIT Sloan 15.010 · OpenCourseWare

Alternates: Illinois: Managerial Economics & Business Analysis/MIT 14.01SC Microeconomics (video lectures)/Khan Academy Microeconomics

 30 h A pricing memo for a product you know: demand, elasticity, cost structure, competitor response, and the price you'd set.

Data, Models, and Decisions

MIT Sloan 15.060 · OpenCourseWare

Alternates: Saylor BUS204 Business Statistics/Khan Academy Statistics & Probability/Damodaran Statistics 101

 35 h A regression and a decision tree on a public dataset, plus one page on what they imply — and what they cannot tell you.

Management Communication

MIT Sloan 15.279 · OpenCourseWare

Alternates: Colorado Boulder: Business Writing/Saylor BUS210 Business Communication

 15 h Your one-page memo template (used for every deliverable that follows) and a five-minute recorded presentation of the Term 1 accounting memo.
T2

Core functions: finance, marketing, operations, people

Months 4–6
≈125 h
DoneCourseHoursWhat you build

Corporate Finance

Aswath Damodaran · NYU Stern · free online, 36 sessions

Alternates: MIT 15.401 Finance Theory I (video lectures)/Wharton: Introduction to Corporate Finance (shorter)/Saylor BUS202 Principles of Finance

 50 h A capital-budgeting model (NPV, IRR, sensitivity tables) and a cost-of-capital estimate for a listed company, built from a blank sheet.

Introduction to Marketing

Wharton · Coursera · audit free

Alternates: MIT 15.810 Marketing Management/Saylor BUS203 Principles of Marketing

 25 h A segmentation-targeting-positioning analysis and marketing-mix plan for one product, with a written positioning statement.

Introduction to Operations Management

Wharton · Coursera · audit free

Alternates: MIT 15.760 Introduction to Operations Management/Saylor BUS300 Operations Management

 25 h A process map of a real process you can observe: find the bottleneck, compute capacity and flow time, propose one fix and its payoff.

People and Organizations

MIT Sloan 15.668 · OpenCourseWare

Alternates: Michigan: Leading People and Teams/Saylor BUS209 Organizational Behavior/MIT 15.301 Managerial Psychology

 25 h Diagnose one team or organisational problem you've actually seen, using three frameworks from the course, and recommend an intervention.
T3

Integration: strategy, control, negotiation, the wider economy

Months 7–9
≈130 h
DoneCourseHoursWhat you build

Strategic Management I

MIT Sloan 15.902 · OpenCourseWare

Alternates: UVA Darden: Business Strategy specialization/Darden: Foundations of Business Strategy (single course)/Saylor BUS501 Strategic Management · Frameworks: Porter's ISC at HBS

 40 h A full strategic analysis of one company — industry forces, value chain, competitor positions, options — and a recommendation memo you'd put in front of its board.

Managerial Accounting

Saylor BUS105 · free certificate of completion

Alternate: the managerial half of MIT 15.501

 25 h A cost-volume-profit model and an annual budget with variance analysis for one business unit (real or realistic).

Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

University of Michigan · Coursera · audit free

Alternates: MIT 15.667 Negotiation and Conflict Management/Saylor BUS403 Negotiations · Read Getting to Yes alongside

 20 h Three practice negotiations against a pod member, each with a written prep sheet (interests, BATNA, ZOPA) and a debrief on what moved the outcome.

Applied Macro- and International Economics

MIT Sloan 15.012 · OpenCourseWare

Alternates: MIT 14.02 Principles of Macroeconomics/Khan Academy Macroeconomics

 25 h A country-and-industry brief (growth, inflation, rates, currency, policy) and what it means for one business over the next twelve months.

Business Law + Business Ethics

Saylor BUS205 + BUS200 · free certificates

For the ethics half, the richer option is Harvard's Justice with Michael Sandel (free, full lectures)

 20 h A contract-review checklist you'd actually use, and an ethics memo on a real dilemma: the decision, the reasoning, the stakeholders you weighed.
T4

Electives and capstone

Months 10–12
≈135 h
Choose three electives, then the capstone
DoneCourseHoursWhat you build

Valuation

Aswath Damodaran · NYU Stern · free online, 25 sessions · elective

Same material as YouTube playlists: Damodaran on Valuation

 40 h A DCF and a relative valuation of a listed company, with a one-page investment thesis and the three assumptions the answer hinges on.

New Enterprises

MIT Sloan 15.390 · OpenCourseWare · elective

Pair with Y Combinator Startup School and the YC Library/Stanford eCorner/MIT 15.351 Managing Innovation & Entrepreneurship/Saylor BUS305

 30 h A business plan in the 15.390 structure and a ten-slide pitch, for a venture you'd actually consider.

Business and Financial Modeling

Wharton · Coursera specialization · each course audits free · elective

Alternate: Wharton: Business Analytics

 30 h A three-statement forecast model with scenarios and a sensitivity or simulation tab — the model you'll reuse in the capstone.

Game Theory

Yale ECON 159 · Ben Polak · Open Yale Courses · elective

Full lecture video, problem sets and exams; the standard MBA "strategic thinking" elective in its original form

 30 h Model one real competitive situation — a pricing war, a bid, a market entry — as a game, and write up the equilibrium and what it implies.

Financial Markets

Yale ECON 252 · Robert Shiller · Open Yale Courses · elective

Alternate: MIT 15.433 Investments

 30 h A one-page explainer of how a financial instrument you actually use is priced, who bears its risk, and how it is regulated.

Introduction to System Dynamics

MIT Sloan 15.871 · OpenCourseWare · elective

Alternates: MITx Supply Chain Management MicroMasters (audit on edX)/MIT 15.769 Operations Strategy

 30 h A causal-loop and stock-and-flow model of one business problem (inventory, hiring, growth) that shows why the obvious fix doesn't work.

Capstone: the board pack

Wharton Business Foundations Capstone · Coursera · or self-set · required

Use Wharton's capstone brief for structure, or set your own: pick a real business and produce the complete pack — strategy, market plan, operating plan, three-statement forecast, valuation, risks — assembled from the deliverables above.

 45 h A 15–20 page board pack plus a 12-slide presentation, delivered live to your pod, who question it as a board would.
Every week, alongside the courses

The case method, without the classroom

Free case sources

The 90-minute routine

  • 0–40Read the case once straight through, then again with a pen. List the decision, the constraints, the numbers that matter.
  • 40–60Decide. Write the one-page recommendation before looking at anything else.
  • 60–80Find out what the company did and how it went. Note where your reasoning differed, and whether you were wrong or merely different.
  • 80–90Swap memos with the pod. Argue about one point. Stop.
Optional

Turning it into something you can show

None of these equals an IIM, ISB or top-tier MBA on a CV, and it's worth being clear-eyed about that. What they do is add a proctored exam and a certificate to work you were doing anyway, at a price close to zero.

Saylor University MBA

Tuition-free · $5 per proctored exam · ~15 exams

A self-paced, fully online MBA: eight core courses, a leadership capstone and a three-course specialization (analytics or international business). Entry is a proctored exam at 80% covering micro, macro, finance, OB, marketing, MIS, management and operations, plus the first course. The prep is exactly the free Saylor BUS courses linked in the terms above, and the open versions of the MBA courses (BUS601 onward) are in the Saylor business catalogue. Open to residents outside the United States.

Recognition: ASIC international accreditation and a Florida licence — not AACSB, EQUIS or AMBA, and not an Indian (UGC/AIU) equivalence. Treat it as structure and proof of work, not a degree that opens recruiting doors.

SWAYAM / NPTEL (IITs and IIMs)

Free to learn · ₹1,000 per course for the proctored exam

IIT- and IIM-taught management courses — accounting, marketing, operations, strategy, finance — with an optional in-person proctored exam and a certificate signed by the offering institute. Two enrolment cycles a year, so map them onto the terms when the cycle opens. See the IIM Bangalore courses on SWAYAM, the NPTEL course portal, the full NPTEL catalogue, and the NPTEL YouTube channel for lectures outside the cycle.

Recognition: the strongest of the cheap options inside India — government-backed, credit-transferable at many universities, and the institute names are known to every employer.

Wharton Business Foundations

Audit free · certificate is a monthly subscription

The four Wharton courses in Terms 1–2 plus the capstone form this specialization. Auditing costs nothing; paying adds graded assignments and a certificate. It is the best-known "MBA sampler" on the internet, and the one most often cited by people who later applied to full programmes.

Recognition: a Coursera certificate from a named school; recognisable on LinkedIn, not a credential employers weigh heavily.

HBS Online CORe

Paid · the one item here that costs real money

Harvard Business School's online pre-MBA programme (analytics, economics, financial accounting) with a final exam. Included only because it is the most recognised of the non-degree credentials; it is not needed for the plan.

Recognition: the HBS name on a certificate carries genuine weight, especially for MBA admissions; judge the fee against that.

To find more open courses, Class Central indexes every platform above, including all SWAYAM courses; the full MIT Sloan OpenCourseWare list runs to well over a hundred courses; and IIMBx on edX carries IIM Bangalore's English-language MOOCs.

The backbone

Eight books that stand in for the reading packs

Read the first two in month one; the rest line up with the terms. Josh Kaufman's Personal MBA reading list is the long version.

  1. The Personal MBA — Josh Kaufman · the map of the whole territory
  2. The Ten-Day MBA — Steven Silbiger · the core in condensed form; good for spotting what you don't know
  3. Financial Intelligence — Karen Berman & Joe Knight · accounting for people who have to use it, Term 1
  4. Competitive Strategy — Michael Porter, with Good Strategy / Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt · Term 3
  5. Playing to Win — A.G. Lafley & Roger Martin · strategy as five choices, Term 3
  6. The Goal — Eliyahu Goldratt · operations, as a novel, Term 2
  7. Getting to Yes — Fisher, Ury & Patton · negotiation, Term 3
  8. Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman · judgement and decision-making, anywhere
Ten hours, placed

A week that survives a full-time job

Mon
75 min

Lectures and notes. Stop at the timer even mid-lecture.

Tue
75 min

Lectures and notes.

Wed
75 min

Lectures and notes.

Thu
75 min

Problem sets, from memory first.

Fri
—

Off. Catch-up only if a deliverable is late.

Sat
3 h

The build: the model, the memo, the thing in the last column.

Sun
90 min

One case, then the pod.