Hi everyone welcome to TechDev Adventures My name is Leonardo and in this video I'm going to share how I passed the AWS Solutions Architect certification exam one of the most difficult tests from AWS. I'm going to talk about how I studied, and share some hints that might actually help you getting through it If you are planning to take this test, keep watching Let me start giving you a bit of context I have some previous experience with AWS and this year I started taking all certifications First I took the Cloud Practitioner exam then the Developer Associate after that, the Solutions Architect Associate and just recently I got my Solutions Architect Professional badge So at this point you probably know why this exam is considered the most difficult one from AWS There are lots of topics and a lot of tools you need to know in depth So I'm not going to focus on those I'm going to instead talk about how I studied, the steps I followed, why they were good for me, and share some hints of things I realized during this process The process I followed is a bit different of what people recommend but it worked great for me It was divided in 3 stages, and this is what I'm going to tell you right now I started Phase 1 exactly like I did with the others I bought a course at Udemy, from Stéphane Maarek which covers all the parts you need to know about the certification and at the end, it provides you some Sample Questions, but it is still not a Mock Test In general, I really recommend his courses It covers all the content you need to know and go through the basics without being boring Even though for this one, specifically, he assumes that you have already previous knowledge or some previous certifications After that I watched the videos from the Exam Readiness free course from AWS which does not cover the topics in depth but it gives you a nice idea on how the exam will look like And finally, I also downloaded the Sample Questions provided by AWS itself They give you 10 questions, you can try them and see if you got them right because the answers are in the end of the PDF file And because this was everything I did to take the Associate certifications I decided to take the Practice Exam from AWS to see if I was really prepared for the exam I really recommend taking this practice exam because the questions are really close from the real one This exam is also paid, but if you got previous certifications, then you must have [got] a voucher and can do it for free So what happened [then], I took the exam and well, I was not so great, I got only 65% And as you might know, you need at least 75% to pass this exam And I was wondering what I missed, but unfortunately this exam won't give you the [correct] answers So anyways, the date of my exam was already scheduled I was not feeling prepared, then I decided to reschedule the exam to one more week, to have more time to study Then I started what I call the Phase 2, where I decided to use a Mock Exam I had used Mock Exams in the past and they are also great I looked at Udemy and found the course that everyone recommends from Jon Bonso It's a Practice Exam it covers all the topics and it has 4 full exams with 75 questions each The cool thing about this course is that, among the answers, it provides you also links for external resources as for example AWS Whitepapers or Cheat Sheets from TutorialsDojo So you know, I started and do the first exam, then the second and the third, and I'm always getting from 65 to 70% And you know, people always recommend you have to at least, get 90% on those exams if you want to go well in the real one, and then it was the point that I realized that this exam was [very] different from the Associate levels And then when I started looking at the answers, I realized that I was missing the things that I really didn't have hands-on experience, as for example AWS Organizations, some networking and in-depth DynamoDB usage Another thing is that the questions will try to trick you into wrong answers simply because you don't have in-depth knowledge [in those topics] One example is a questions about how to connect a mobile application with DynamoDB The answer that I chose would use a 3-tier application So the mobile application in the frontend, connecting to an API Gateway, and then a server application connecting to DynamoDB I thought that this was great and it would work It turned out that the "best" answer, according to the test, was connecting the mobile application directly to DynamoDB Then I thought, "well, you should never do this", right? connecting the frontend application directly to your database But in fact you can do this, because you can use Cognito credentials to leverage some security in specific rows and columns that you define per user and I didn't know that And the Practice Exams helped me to learn these kind of new things but anyways, one more week has passed and I was still not feeling preparing for taking the exam So then I decided to reschedule the exam for the second time but this time I pushed the deadline one month ahead instead of one week Because I knew one week wouldn't be enough Because I knew I would have to go deeper into those things I didn't know if I would really like to pass the certification exam So then I started Phase 3, which was all about reviewing everything I did and going deeper inside the things I didn't know I didn't want to go over the same Practice Exams over and over again because they would be still the same questions and I would end up learning the answers by heart So instead, I created a "Study Document", and I was filling this document I went through the answers and I was filling this document with everything that I didn't know and thought it was important for the exam I ended up creating a document that was made of 2 parts One, important information about tools, and another part with some hints about special [Use] Cases After reviewing the answers from the 3 Practice Exams, I ended up with a file of around 40 pages or so I'm sharing the file with you, but I don't think it's really useful (1) because the things I didn't know and wrote down may be known to you and (2), because there are probably things that I know because of my experience and you didn't have hands-on, you don't know, and they are not in this file So what I recommend is that you do the same process Anyways, after I wrote this file I said "let me take the last test" And, funny thing, I get 70% also in the last exam It's not because I didn't learn anything, but because the questions don't repeat They are not the same questions from the 3 previous exams, you are always learning new stuff So you know, I go over the answers and I add more 10 pages or so to my document Then, at this point, the exam date was getting closer, I couldn't reschedule it anymore, because you can do it only 2 times, and then I started wondering, "what else can I do to see if I am ready to take this exam"? So then I search again in Udemy to see if I can get another Mock Exam and I was lucky because Stéphane had just released, at that point, his own Practice Exam It is also a nice Practice Exam, but it only provides you with 1 full exam of 75 questions Then I buy the course and I take the exam, and for my surprise I get only 40%, and I was like what? Then I go over the answers, I analyze them, and I notice that I was not really learning anything new It was pretty much the same content from the previous Practice Exams But the questions themselves, they were made in a different way they were very different from the course from Jon Bonso In fact, they were much closer from the ones from the [real] exam After I took the test I realised there were 3 or 4 questions that looked almost the same They were still different, they were not the same, but they were very similar Well, after that my time [was running out], I had the test [scheduled] and could not reschedule anymore, but I was feeling prepared I didn't have time to go through my document and review it, but because I wrote those things down, it helped me memorizing the things I didn't have hands-on [experience] Well, in fact I was not feeling prepared for the exam I think you never believe you are prepared for an exam like that But, well, I went there and I took the exam, passed in the first attempt with 87% And I was super happy with it And now I'm going to share 4 hints of things I learned during this process So the first hint is that you need to know how to Manage Your Time during the exam You know, you'll have 170 minutes to go over 75 questions This will give you around 2:15 minutes per question Now, if you are not an English native-speaker, you can request an extension of 30 minutes and that will give you around 2:40 minutes for every question And why is it important to do this? Because the questions are all about interpretation As an example, one question might ask you to select a solution that allows you to block certain things and one of the answers might indeed block certain things, which is wrong The solution must allow you to do that, but not really block it Another thing you need to keep in mind is that the questions are big You will spend more or less 1 minute to read and understand the question So it's useful to know how to identify important words, but you know, also the context will help you figuring out which answer is the best one And considering the amount of time you have per question, I think it's not really useful to flag questions as people recommend, to come back later I will explain you why When you reach the last question, you will be probably running out of time already And f you want to come back to those questions, you will have to spend at least 1 more minute to read it again, and more trying to figure out what you couldn't get correct in the first attempt Honestly, when I finished my exam I had only 2:30 minutes remaining I came back to this one question I thought I would know I spent 1 minute on it and said "You know what? Leave it." Because I was very tired, and I wanted to pee I could have gone to the toilette, but the thing is, the exam wouldn't be paused The bottom line here is, if you see you're spending more than 5 minutes on a question, just leave it Second hint is about getting used to Change Focus all the time As I mentioned before, the questions are huge. The answers might be huge as well So you know, the context will help you to pick the best answer, but in the exam, after let's say after 2 minutes 40 seconds you will need to switch to something completely different And you are still thinking about the old one So the problem is that, in the real world, this does not happen You have much more time to think about a project, at least more than 2:40 minutes And if you are involved with 3-4 multiple projects running at the same time, You are still going to get some Kickoff meetings to discuss such things, right? I realized there is only one way of getting used to this: you need to do the Practice Exams And they worked great for me and I really recommend Hint number 3 is about Rescheduling the Exam You know, there is no shame in rescheduling the exam if you think you are not prepared for it But one thing I can recommend is that you use at least 1 more month to prepare yourself better You need to consider that 1 week is not enough, and you can do it only 2 times So as bigger the interval you can put between those dates, as better If I would have done that, I would have probably get a better rate than 87% And talking about what I could have done differently, it comes Hint number 4 which is about Studying the references that are given inside the Courses and the Practice Exams These materials will provide you with lots of links to AWS Whitepapers, Cheat Sheets and other external links that will help you getting some more in-depth knowledge into some topics Yes, it's a lot of content, but it has everything to do with Hint number 3, feeling prepared to take the exam And with this I finish this video, I hope you liked it, thanks for watching If you have feedback or questions, please leave a comment Give me your like and share it, if you liked the video If you are taking the exam, good luck! And I hope to see you next time :)
