How to take courses for free on Coursera — Financial Aid

4 min readSep 10, 2023

Coursera has recently taken its place in the first place in terms of quality among online education platforms. Courses on this platform, where there are hundreds of different courses, often require a fee for the certificate. But Coursera offers a way to access certificates for free. Today I will show you how you can access Coursera courses for free using this method.

First we choose the course we want to take. For this article, I will take the University of Toronto course on Autonomous Cars, which I have been planning to take for a long time. The course is a course in Autonomous Cars Specialization. This means that if we complete all the courses in this specialization, we will issue one for each completed course and an extra full completion certificate.

If you look carefully, you will see that “Financial Aid Available” is written on the side with the name of the course. Click on that article.

Press the “Continue to the application” button

In the window that opens, it will ask you a few questions to answer. The answers to the questions are as I shared in the photo above.

I recommend that you state that you are studying at a college, earning $200 a year, and that you are a student.

Copy the text below to answer the question “Why are you applying?”:

My main career goal is to learn every day. I really want to learn and to progress in my career. Programming requires constant learning and improving. Taking this course will help me to learn and study this Data Science and also to implement it. It can help me advance in my knowledge. This course will help me in defining Data Science, understanding how Python could potentially impact our business and industry, to write a thought leadership piece regarding use cases and industry potential of Data Science, explain Data Science to clients, friends, joining a community of economists, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and technologists that are shaping this technology as we speak. Identifying which aspects of Data Science seem most important and relevant to us, Walking away with a strong foundation in where Data Science is going, what it does, and how to prepare for it. Data Science course will help me achieve it to learn. Courses on Coursera helped me to greatly increase my programming knowledge in the past.

After that, press the button below to skip to the next page.

Put 0 in the “How much can you pay” section.

How will your selected course help with your goals?

I live only for my scholarship, it is very much difficult for me to gather such amount of money for the certificate. Financial Aid will help me take this course without any adverse impact on my monthly essential needs. So I’m badly in need of this financial aid. I want to take this course as I want to learn. This course will boost my job prospects after graduation from my institute. It will help perform better in understanding and learning this technology and give me an edge over my competitors. A verified certificate will attach credibility to the certificate I receive from this course. I plan to complete all assignments on or before time as I have done in previous Signature Track Courses. Also, I intend to participate in Discussion Forums, which I have found to supplement my learning immensely in the other online courses I have taken on Coursera. I also plan to grade assignments that are to peer-reviewed which I believe will an invaluable learning opportunity.

In the section below, write the sentence “I agree to the terms above.”

You will have to press the review button to finish at the end.