I read a fellow student's notes walking into the online program here and thought to also provide some heads-up for those are are interested in the program or just want to see what to expect from certain classes. I will try to update this throughout the program and here is a breakdown of what I took since Fall 2025.
Fall 2026, I choosing two of the three elevtives FIN 5813 (Portfolio Management), FIN 5223 (Investment Theory and Strategy), and MSIS 5673 (Descriptive Analytics and Visualization). For those who's taken them before, please share tips!
Some background about me--applied business major (a little bit of business + finance + accounting + economics application to agriculture background) as undergrad, work in business finance for ~4 years before taking on an online MBA. I always know I want to get on an MBA program (for more in-depth finance and management classes) but also don't want to $100k+ for a program where the alums are mostly claiming the price premiums are for potential of network. $530/credit is prob the cheapest of all that I researched. So far all A for my classes.
Fall 2025 (ACCT 5183 16wk + ECON 5113 8wk + MKTG 5133 8wk) spent 18-22hr/wk
- Definitely shot myself in the foot while doing this with full-time work, but I don't regret that because I'd rather cramp the "easier" classes earlier on in the program than cramping the "harder" electives later in the program.
- ACCT 5183 (w. Nabar) would be a challenge for those without too much finance/accounting background, with weekly assignments and a bigger project you group with 3-4 other classmates. If you are lucky to have a group that is good with planning, communications, and not so technically challenged, you should do fine since you will have essentially a full semester to get on it. Prof. also requires you to provide feedbacks on your teams so it pushes people to try. The best way to learn would be to watch his video before reading through the textbook (the chapters are terrible long for those visual/conceptual learners). His videos usually provides a good sense of the accounting steps you'll use for midterm/finals questions. Also from someone who's taken accounting classes in undergrad, it helps a lot to have a clear understanding of how info flow between balance sheet/income statement, and the concept of accruals. Exams are proctored, but good pacing.
- ECON 5113 (w. Morris) is straight-forward but goes by quickly for 8 week since everything is in 2x and weekly quizzes. Discussion posts are more for participations and completions. Materials are easier in the beginning and quickly ramp up about 30% into the class, then slow down a little with game theory related topic in the last 20%. Exams are proctored and good pacing. I maybe biased on this review with an Econ minor before, somethings helpful to learn this class is to graph things out with his notes printed and make sense from a logic/theoretical sense.
- MKTG 5133 (w. Arnold) might be my biggest stressor (for someone who is not big on reading) in that semester. There are assigned Harvard Business case reading and writing (weekly discussion posts and midterm/final) on top of lectures slides. The content are very interesting and relevant to current events, and I find printing out slides to walk through the lecture video helpful. Zoom sessions here and there for participations. This class's discussion post might require more effort, and the prof def read into your responses and provide very thoughtful feedback. Helpful tip for me was to remember some of the brand/company examples related to the topic and reference them later. Exams have multiple choice and essays, but open book with no proctor. Overall interesting topic, challenging reads, and most importantly you know the prof. puts efforts to ensure class experience by interacting with students foreshadow to some in the future sessions.
Spring 2026 (Fin 5013 16 wk + MBA 5300/5400/5500 6wk each) spent 15-18hr/wk
- Fin 5013 (w. Burt) straight forward for those with some finance background, but his videos are engaging (and sometimes funny). His recommendation, and I agreed, is best to use video and lecture notes as primary reference with book as supplement. Printing out slides and take notes along with videos helped me, and I rarely go on the textbook. Weekly homework starts off easy yet could be challenging later on for some, but it has unlimited attempts so you could spend as you as you want for 100%. There's a HW I spent about 5-6 hr on a Saturday to get to 93%, so have an expectation some assignment could take longer to get to an ideal score. Exams are similar to the practice problems with maybe 1-3 new questions. He curves the scores accordingly after. There's a quota you need to meet for a zoom session to discuss current financial events, but you could make up with one-page write up each. I'd way prefer to participate in a ~40min call if I could, contents are relevant and interesting.
- MBA 5300 (w. Suess)/5400/5500 are 1 credit each.
- I'll try to give a benefit of the doubt on the new instructor for 5300, which i believe it as instructor's first time teaching this class. For SPRING 5300 only, on a weekly basis you'll have--reading quiz from textbook, discussion post for questions then respond to classmates, case study reading from Harvard Business that you purchase separately, and ~2-page writing on the case study. IMO this is beyond what a 1 hr class should be. There is a recorded video each case study from the instructor about the case study but nothing regarding the actual curriculum or teaching material beyond that. (Poor) TA provides all the feedback and grades everything. While the intent of discussion posts was to connect students and share lesson-learned, the later weeks' reponses are much shorter and people just try to meet that requirements. Some classmates mentioned they sometimes don't get responses from the instructor. I might not appreciate the minimal effort the instructor puts in and made this class be a busy-work type of class, but I am hopeful this could be modified since the content are relevant. If you taken the class in later semester, please share!
- 5400 is a tableau class, I spent about 2-4 hr each week. This class would be easier for those with intermediate experience on Excel (or other finance/business programming) because of data logic, but the instructions from this class could be hard to follow at times, confirmed by a few others from the corhort. The second challenge would be to look for a good set of data on your own, and try to stick with it for the rest of the class. I personally spent too much time looking for data that fits the requirements than actually working on the tableau part of it. Mac users also shared they have harder time working with Tableau at times for this class.
- 5500 is for project management. There is a blend of theory and practicalities involved. You have weekly discussion and lecture, along with submission on a project planning file where you try to execute and work on a personal project. This class might be more interesting for those who are struggling with a project or even with just a team currently, since you'll easily identify what goes wrong with the one you are in and how to best address them. You'll also get some inspirations and encouragements from the discussion posts where people share their stories to get to the root causes as well as trying to address them. The final project is broken down into a few smaller parts which would be the smaller submission homework for the first few weeks, so you are essentially doing milestones for a bigger project at the end. I spent about 3-4 hr each week on this class.
Summer 2026 (MSIS 5303 8WK)
- This is an Excel solver focus class with Rick. This class isn't hard for me because of regular excel usage and practice of mathematical logics. And I can understand why Rick says it could be a lot for 8 week, and he usually advices against taking them 8 week. This is a class usually recommended for 16 week, and putting them into 8 week means there are deadline essentially every 2-3 days. There are smaller assignments (called Gold Star) that has 1 to 2 problem using Excel Solver. Every 2-3 of these small assignment comes 1 bigger assignment that is more complex and take 30-60% more time to complete. Rick has his own textbook that you'll purchase to read, get the homework questions from, and take quizzes (short, open-book, but graded). There are a lot of short lecture videos (sometimes filled with stories) and Rick changes up the questions from the books so what we do in the summer may not be the same as what people see in the fall. Similar to the ACCT, FIN, MKTG classes professor, Rick responses quickly usually even with 12 hr. For STEM/business/finance people, this should be a solid A class for you :)
- MGMT 5113 Management--Multiple types of assignments involved for this class includes recorded interviews wit 3 managers, discussion posts, Zoom calls later afternoon central time, midterm/finals with pretty packed schedule, two group essays for 5 pages each, final recorded presentations with the group. This is also a class where part of the grade depends on how your group is. There are a lot of work involved around the learning about managements for a typical 8 week class so be prepared this would require more time than MSIS 5303.
Lastly, I am debating to take two of the three electives FIN 5813 (Portfolio Management), FIN 5223 (Investment Theory and Strategy), and MSIS 5673 (Descriptive Analytics and Visualization). Will try to share those as I go.
