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Introduction

I’ve passed the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certification exam with just 2 months of preparation while working full-time as a software engineer. In this article, I’ll be sharing everything about this exam, my preparation strategies and tips. So, if you have plans on taking this exam anytime soon, read this article till the end.

What is AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification

With the rise of Cloud Computing, companies have constantly been shifting from running their infrastructure on-premise, to running them on cloud, which offers far more elasticity in terms of scaling and resiliency in case a disaster strikes.

The AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certification validates your ability to design and deploy well-architected solutions on AWS, which is the leading cloud provider today. In simple terms, this exam tests your ability to propose an architecture given a specific scenario. For example: a company wants their application to continue running even if an entire AWS region, where that application was hosted, is down due to a disaster. So, how would you design their infrastructure around this use case?

Exam Format

In this exam, you will get 65 questions and 130 minutes to answer them which means you get 2 mins per question. You will be graded on a percentile basis on a scale of 100 to 1000 where you will nead to score more than 720 to pass the exam. Based on this information, you can approximate that you will have to answer about 72% of the questions correctly in order to pass. You can refer this link for more details on how scoring works.

This exam has a pass / fail criteria. If you pass the exam, your score doesn’t really matter. It will only be written on your score report for your reference. It will not be mentioned anywhere on the certificate.

The cost of taking this exam is 150 USD and with taxes it comes up to about 177 USD. Since I took the exam in India, the amount for me was around 13,500 INR.

My Preparation Strategy

I prepared for about 2 months while having a full-time job and simultaneously running my 🎬 YouTube channel where I post resourceful videos every week. During these 2 months of preparatory period, I studied for about 2 hours on weekdays and 4-6 hours on weekends.

For preparation, I took the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Course by Stephane Maarek which is available on Udemy. While taking this course, I dumped all of the information available in the course into a Notion page.

Once I was done with the course, I bought three practice test packages for the AWS SAA exam on Udemy that are provided by:

Each of these practice test packages contain 6 practice tests. Additionally, a free practice test is provided with the course.

While taking the practice tests, I dumped the questions along with their explanations, into a Notion page, for the questions that I got wrong and the questions that I found difficult to answer. This would come in handy later when I revise everything before the exam.

Until now, everything was entangled in my head as I had not consumed information in an organized manner. So, I consolidated all of the information from the course and the practice tests into dense concise notes that, instead of Notion, I took on another note-taking app called Obsidian. I’ll explain why in another video. For the sake of the AWS exam, you can take your notes anywhere.

If you want my notes, you will have to wait for some time until I figure out a way to share my Obsidian notes in a presentable format. They cannot be directly shared like Notion pages.

Consolidating my notes took about a week and while doing so I went through all of the information again but this time with a much more idea of the concepts. Everything started making sense and I felt confident to take the AWS SAA exam. So, I revised my consolidated notes once and took the exam the next day.

Taking the Test

You can either take the test offline at a testing center or online at the comfort of your home. I would suggest you take the test offline if you have testing centers in your area. If not, then you can take the online route. I had to take this test online as there are no testing centers nearby.

Do keep in mind that the proctoring in the online test is extremely strict and if the proctor cancels your exam, you won’t get a refund. In such a scenario, you will have to rebook and retake the test at a later date.

Tips for taking the AWS SAA exam

  • Take as many practice tests as you can. They will give you an idea of the kind of topics that come up in the exam most often. Also, the questions in these practice tests match very well with the ones appearing on the actual exam.

  • The amount of information that you will have to go through to prepare for this exam is enormous. You not only need a good understanding of the various AWS resources and architectures, but you will also have to remember a lot of information. So, filtering out the irrelevant details from the dumped information and making concise notes, that you can easily revise within 1 or 2 days is crucial for this exam.

That’s all folks

That was all about the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate exam. Up next, I have plans to take the AWS Developer Associate exam which focuses on the development aroud AWS services. As a personal milestone, I want to clear the AWS Developer Associate exam before I move to Canada 🇨🇦 for my MS.