My Path To Be A Certified AWS Solution Architect

Ever since I have passed my AWS Solutions Architect exam last month, many people have been asking me how I passed the exam, and what resources I used to prepare for the exam. I thought of kickstarting my blog (Yes, it has been quite a while since my last post!) to detail my journey to help fellows who need help in preparing their AWS exams.

I joined Thoughtworks two months ago, and I only started to prepare my AWS Solutions Architect exam after finishing my first week orientation. I remember I started studying on 28th February, and took the exam on 25th March around 6am (It was a friday and also my first day of joining my first Thoughtworks project officially). My company has tonnes of resources that help Thoughtworkers in learning technologies, especially in cloud computing, and I am lucky to be enjoying the resources. I mainly used the resources recommended by Thoughtworks community to study for the cert as below:

Start Prepping Date: 28th February 2022

Exam Date: 25th March 2022

Time taken: ~ 1 month

Resources used:

1. Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2022

Even though I have had some experience working with AWS technology before, it is not sufficient to go for examination without going through a proper AWS SA course that should prepare one for the examination syllabus. The examination also tests on many AWS technologies that I have never used before. The course I took is offered by Stephane Maarek, a very popular Udemy instructor in AWS exams. At the time I was writing the blog, the rating was 4.7 of 124900 ratings, taken by almost 534,000 students ! Of the top 10 courses recommended Thoughtworks community, this course sits at number 1 spot too. In my opinion, this course offers content that really follows closely to the syllabus. After finishing the whole course, there will be one practise exams for you to test your learning. For those with prior AWS experience, I suggest before you even begin the course you should test your knowledge by taking the practise exam, then take again the same exam after finishing the whole course. As you know the passing marks for AWS SA exam is 72/100, I remember I scored around 32/100 before starting the course and scored around 75/100 after finishing the course. As for those without any prior AWS experience, there is no point for you to take the exam beforehand so I suggest you to straight dive into the learning course first.

2. Jon Bonso’s Practise Exams

Obviously one practise exam is not enough for me, as I still do not feel very confident to take the exam. Jon Bonso’s practise exams offered on udemy proves to be quite helpful as they are offering six full practise exams, each with 65 questions. Same as the practise exam offered in Stephane’s course, after finishing each exam, you will get to see the detailed answers for every question you have answered regardless whether is correct or wrong. I advise you to study through all the answers and look up again AWS documentation if you do not understand. Normally these answers will provide you links which direct you to the respective AWS documentation. One good thing is that Jon Bonso’s practise exams runs on sales quite often, from 40 dollars it can be slashed till 16 dollars. Do watch out for the sales.

3. Digital Cloud AWS SA Practise Exams

If you feel like you are confident enough at this point of time, probably you could go ahead and register for an exam. But if you do not want to take any risk like me and you have plenty of time, you could consider buying the Neal’s practise exams on Digital Cloud website. I bought only the practise exams package as I do not need to go through the learning videos anymore, the package only costed me at 15 dollars but offers me close to a thousand questions though many questions are repeated. The questions are delivered in 4 different formats namely:

1. Exam Mode – 6 sets of practice exams with the same number of questions (65), time limit (130mins) and pass mark (72%) as the real AWS exam

2. Training Mode – SAme as the Exam mode, you are able to check answers and explanations after every question (no time limit)

   ** Notes: for 1 and 2, you will need to be extra careful in taking practises, because if you accidentally close or refresh the page, you will need to restart all over again. I think this is something that the website needs to improve.

3. Knowledge Review – Focussed practice exams for a specific knowledge area (no time limit, questions are not randomized)

4. Final exam simulator – 65 questions are pulled randomly from a pool of the questions from above. Same time limit (130 mins) and pass mark (72%) as the real AWS exam The author claimed that the exam questions are regularly updated with feedback from students who took the exam, and when I took the exam I did see resemblance between the exam questions and the practise exams from him, that really helped me tremendously in passing the exam.

All in all, it took me one month to go through all the above resources almost day and night everyday, also including taking the exam as well. You probably need close to 2 months to prepare if you are not able to dedicate full one month for it. That’s it, now that you have learnt how to prepare for your exam after peeking into my journey, hope you are able to pass your exam with flying colors and get yourself certified as a AWS SA too !