My tips for the AWS Solution Architect Associate certification

How to pass the AWS Solution Architect Associate certification while working ? In my previous job, I was responsible of the AWS certification program and we released an AWS Journey to make people being certified in 4 to 6 weeks. Here is my advice to optimize the time spent and maximize your chances of success !

My AWS Journey process

The two first steps are not mandatory but can be helpful if you have access to those trainings & coachings.

Cloud Academy - AWS Solution Architect Associate Learning Path

First, of all you must acquire an important amount of knowledge about the AWS Cloud infrastructure and the many services it is proposing. I wanted to get a solid knowledge without having to pass tons of hours in learning videos. I also needed to have instructors with a good level of english and communication to avoid the "Homer Simpson Monkey" after 3 minutes.

After a quick overview, I choose Cloud Academy to prepare myself because even if the price is high (around 40$/month), they offer a strong learning path with comprehensive videos, practice labs, section tests and a final training exam. The learning path estimated time is around 36h but the labs can be quickly completed. I achieved the whole path in only 26 hours. So I worked on it 2 hours a day during 2 weeks.

Whizlabs - AWS Practice Exams

Once you got an overall knowledge after following the Cloud Academy learning path, you will have to train yourself through practice exams. You'll have to familiarize yourself with the typology of the questions, answers and time management. I recommend Whizlabs because their practice exams are very similar to the real ones. Some of them explore some concepts you may not have seen in the training courses. This is why you should do few practice exams, even if you quickly reach a good score (more than 72%). Personally, I passed through 5 practice exams before registering to the real exam. I succeeded at the first try with the score of 89%.

My advices for the exam

Here is a list of advices that can be very useful the D-Day :

• When you're not sure to have the good answer(s), try to eliminate the wrong one(s).
• Try to find the keywords in the question. Ex : questions about Roles or Kinesis are easyly recognizable.
• Try not to spend more than 2min per question.
• Don't overthink : there is no trap.
• Don't stress if you dont have the direct answer to the first questions, the next and last ones will probably be less complicated.
• Don't preempt your result. I passed 7 exams and 6 times I was pretty sure that I will fail in the middle of the exam. It wasn't the case.

Useful information

Here is a recap of useful information about this certification :

• Duration : 130min
• Cost : 150$
• Number of questions : 65
• Average passing score : 72%