Getting a MIT Education for Free – MIT OpenCourseWare

It’s slightly disappointing to think that MIT Open Course Ware and other online free courses are not used more by young people of the next generation. I want to use this post as part of a mini-series to better elucidate various methods to educate yourself at a very high level using just a laptop, tremendous amounts of self-discipline, and innate curiosity to explore advanced concepts.

I’ll begin with the benefits of using alternative means of studying besides degrees/schooling to improve job prospects. First, experience and interests go a very long way in demonstrating your worth and value to a company, and gathering the skills to improve your own skillset, problem-solving ability, and background knowledge will help you demonstrate your value through independent projects, research, certifications, and exam scores. There are thousands of software engineers who have graduated with a computer science degree and want to work for a company, but what really distinguishes those people are those who are able to demonstrate their experience and value from past experience, past independent projects, and research work.

One way that you can better enhance your skillsets is by enrolling yourself into college courses for free.

MIT has a huge library of free online courses. They are also one of the best universities in the world. MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. It is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. There are materials from 2400 courses.

When you take a course that you’re particularly interested in, purchase the associated textbook for the course, and try to time yourself so that you take the exams in appropriate testing. The maximum benefit for yourself will be when you can test yourself in an environment similar to actual schooling, therefore making sure that you’re taking things super seriously.

The course that you’re thinking of taking really depends on your interests and your goals. If you are a high school senior who is thinking of a biology major and wants to prepare for college, maybe take an introductory biology course the summer before college. If you’re an adult with a business background but want to learn more skills in machine learning to diversity your portfolio of skills, then take some courses in machine learning.

Here’s a good Ted Talk of somebody who has actually gone through the whole process and can give you lots of great advice.

This person went through an entire 4-year CS degree material in just 12 months. This requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline, but he virtually saved himself over 300K and also gathered sufficient skills to make powerful projects and improve his job prospects significantly.

Here’s the link to OCW – get started today! – ocw.mit.edu

Best of luck!

Naman