In this video Helena Liu reveals that top Ivy League universities (Harvard, MIT, Yale) provide many of their flagship courses for free online. She explains why this hidden resource matters—students can learn the same material, complete the same assignments, and, for a modest fee, obtain a credential that carries the prestige of the institution, potentially boosting career prospects. The video walks through step‑by‑step instructions for accessing specific Harvard courses (CS50, CS50 Python, CS50 AI) via cs50.harvard.edu, obtaining certificates through edX, and navigating MIT OpenCourseWare and the MIT Open Learning Library using course numbers (6.0001, 6.036, 18.657). It then covers Coursera’s model for free enrollment in Yale and other Ivy courses, noting the subscription cost for certificates. Finally, Helena shows how to add completed courses and certificates to LinkedIn, emphasizing keyword optimization to attract recruiters. Throughout, she frames the information as a “hidden gem” that can save tens of thousands of dollars and accelerate professional growth.
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Let me tell you something that the education industry does not want you to know. Right now, you can take Ivy League courses online for free. I'm talking about top universities like Harvard, MIT, and Yale. Quietly, these universities over the years have been putting some of their top courses online for free. You just need to know where to go. This is the ultimate hidden gem, and so in this video, we have compiled the top courses, and I'll show you exactly where to go, what search terms to put onto these sites once you're on it in order to search for these courses for free. So it's taught by the exact same professors, you're getting the exact same course material, and you're getting the exact same homework as well. I'll also show you how to get the certificate for some of these courses upon completion. Now, some of these certificates do cost a little bit of money, like a few hundred dollars. Now, considering that To get a degree from these universities, people are paying between $60,000 to $100,000 a year. And if you want to go through the whole degree program for 4 years, you're paying like $400,000, coming out with crippling debt. To get a certificate from these top universities for a few hundred dollars is a steal if you ask me, right? And on top of that, it gives you that extra credibility when you talk to potential employers. When you have like Harvard or MIT on your resume, they're like, whoa, you must be Really smart. And so having that extra brand recognition just will take your career to that next level. And I've seen some subreddits where people say after taking some of these free courses, they were able to get raises, advance their career, and maybe even switch to a new career path altogether. All right, without further ado, let's jump into these Ivy League courses. Now let's start with Harvard. One of their most famous courses is their CS50 course, which is their introduction to computer science. And you may be saying, Helena, AI is taking over programming. Why do we still need to learn computer science? Well, just like the fact that like when you write on ChatGPT, you still need to proofread and fix a couple words, rewrite a couple sentences, right? Same with computer AI coding at the moment. It gets you like 80% of the way there, but you still need to know what you're reading to get it to that 100% mile, to get it to that production-level grade. And if you don't know how to code at all, you will still be at a disadvantage. We have come miles away already. Now, just with one programmer, you can do the work of pretty much like 10 programmers before AI. So AI has made it easier to code, but doesn't get you 100% of the way there. So it's still essential that you at least know what you're looking at, and at least you can speak the same lingo as the AI Vibe coding platforms that you're using, right? All right, so To get yourself just familiar with the introduction of like R and C and Python and SQL so that you know all of the basics of computer science, a great course that you can take is from Harvard. And to access this course, and the best part, get this guys, you don't even need to opt in. So just go to cs50.harvard.edu/x. And now you can get a certificate upon completion as well, But it does cost, I think, about $100 or $200 or so. So to get to this course, just go to this website, and this course is taught by the same professor that teaches at Harvard, David Malan. And if you scroll down here, you'll be able to see the lecture from every single week for the whole semester. And if you want to go faster, you can go through these 10 weeks in like 2, 3 weeks as well. Pro tip. And then if you scroll down, you'll be able to find the slides as well as the homework material. So you're getting the exact same course that they teach to undergrads at Harvard for computer science. Mind-blowing. And then down here, you will also see a tab for a final project. So if you do want to get the certificate, you will complete the final project. You can also see the gallery of final projects from people who have completed this course in the past. And by the way, over 6 million people have already completed this course, so you know it is legit. And lastly, if you do want the certificate, simply go to edx.org right over here and then type in CS50 here and then go to the HarvardX course. And you can see that you can actually earn a HarvardX certificate here once you fill out your account here. I do believe it's a couple hundred dollars to get this certificate. I can't remember exactly how much it was, but it's between $100 to $600 roughly. Now let's go on to the second course that you can take from Harvard. So this is similar to the last one you have seen, is also by Professor David Malan, and this is the Introduction to Programming with Python. And as you can see, this website is very similar in terms of structure to the Introduction to Computer Science course. So to access this course here, you just go to cs50.harvard.edu/python. You can see here, the lectures that you can go through every single week. And again, the same structure. You can download the slides here. See, everything's very well organized for you, and you can even do the associated homework material, and you can get a certificate once you complete this course as well from edx.org. All right, so moving on to our 3rd course from Harvard, and to access this course, go to cs50.harvard.edu. .harvard.edu/ai. So this is Harvard's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course with Python. And again, when you scroll through this, you'll see the lectures that's being taught every single week with the projects as well as in the slides. And for this particular course, there is no final project, but if you go to edx.org, you can earn a certificate for this course as well. Now let's move on to MIT. To access the free courses from MIT, which is, by the way, the world's leading university for anything technical, just go to this website. So it is ocw.mit.edu, and this will take you to MIT's OpenCourseWare website. So anyone anywhere in the world can access this website. You can see all of the courses that they have on their free courseware here. And you can also go over here and search for the particular course that you want to take. If you're not sure which course you want to take, you can also click on the Explore button and you'll be able to filter by subjects, by level of difficulty, and by topics here as well. So if you are looking to start your career in anything technical like artificial intelligence or engineering or coding, one popular course you can take is their intro course to that and just type in 6 .0001 for this course, and you'll be able to take their Introduction to Computer Science and Programming with Python course. Once you've found the course that you're looking for, go to Download Courses, and here you'll be able to see all of the lectures. And if you scroll down even more, you'll be able to see the programming assignments here as well. So super great. I don't believe after completing any of the courses from MIT OpenCourseWare will give you a certificate, but once you complete these courses, you'll be able to show all of the assignments you have done, the end results you were able to produce, and you can still add that you have completed this course from MIT on your resume or LinkedIn to give you that boost in terms of credibility. Yes, I get it, you're not getting a degree, but still having an association with such a known brand as MIT will still boost your own credibility as well. Now, if you want a deeper dive in terms of machine learning and AI, here are some other courses that you can access on OpenCourseWare. So type in 6.036 and this will give you their Introduction to Machine Learning course. Another popular one is Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence. And to access this course, put in 18.657 and this will give you their Mathematics of Machine Learning course. Another website that MIT have created for open learning so anyone can access all of the materials for free is their Open Library. So this is the website to access Open Learning Library. I'll include a link in the descriptions below as well. So go to openlearning.mit.edu/courses-program/open-learning-library, and you can see all of the courses that they have put online for free. So OpenCourseWare and Open Learning Library are the 2 places where MIT have put all of their free courses. Now, the last place that you can find Ivy League courses online for free is a website called Coursera.org. It's a similar model to what HarvardX have used where you can take the courses for free, but if you want the certificate, you want to pay a small fee in exchange to do that. Coursera charges about $50 to $100 per month, so it's on a monthly subscription model. And during your subscription period, you can take as many courses and earn as many certificates as you would like. So inside Coursera, you can find courses from Yale here. This one's on financial market. You can also find popular ones on artificial intelligence as well. I have personally gone through one of their top courses on this platform, which is Andrew Chan's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. I've gone through the course myself and actually built an entire neural network, which is one of the things that really opened my eyes and got me excited about artificial intelligence in general. Lastly, once you have completed your Ivy League courses, you want to update the skills section in your LinkedIn profile because if potential recruiters are searching by keywords here, for example artificial intelligence, then you will show up on that search list. All right, so to add this to your profile, click on the Me button here and click on View Profile and then scroll down on your profile until you find License and Certifications. This is where you can add your HarvardX certificate. You just need to put in the name of the certificate, the issuing organization, the date that you have completed it, and the certification link here. Now it's important that you also add the skills that you learned from this course. So if you completed the Intro to Computer Science course, adding keywords like Python, computer science, so this makes it easier for potential recruiters to find you. If you have just completed the course without the certificate, then go down to the courses section, press the plus button, and add in the necessary information associated with that course so you'll still get credit for that. So this is how you can take Ivy League courses online for free. Thank you so much for joining me for this video. If you got any value out of this, please make sure you like and subscribe. We post the latest on tech every single week on this channel, so please make sure you are in the know. And of course, you can take my free AI and automations course below as well. I'll see you in the next video. Talk to you soon.
