This post describes how I studied (and passed) the exam. It is not how I recommend studying. I got a 809 (with passing at 720). I needed more hands on experience and experimenting to score higher. Just like the Practitioner, I got “meets competencies” in all areas.
Note: I missed the email about my score being available. I got it by going to “previous exams” in the AWS Cert console and downloading my score report.
- How I recommend studying for the AWS Associate Developer Study Guide
- Jeanne’s AWS Associate Developer Study Guide
Constraint 1: Why I took the exam in such a rush
- In early January, my employer told me I had to take the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam in the first three months of the year. I did and here’s my thought process in planning for the practitioner . Scott had suggested I ask if I could take the Associate instead. I was busy and decided not to. Shortly after that, I found out my employer wanted me to take the Associate exam in the first six months of the year. Oh well, so much for not taking it.
- February and March aren’t good for me because of robotics and speaking at the DevNexus conference. April I’m traveling at least one and hopefully twice. In May, I’m speaking at Oracle Code (but that one’s local and a talk I’ve done before). And in June I’m traveling again and the Java track lead for QCon New York.
- In January, Oracle has posted on Twitter:
@jeanneboyarsky @thewiprogrammer @javacert New Java certs coming in early 2019. We hope to have more to post soon!
It seems like this will be any day now. We are running out of early 2019! And once the OCA 11 objectives come out, I want that to be the only cert exam in my head! - So I gave it another go at trying to get the AWS Associate cert done before Oracle publishes the Java 11 objectives. And I did it!
Constraint 2: Why I wanted to minimize my study time
My original plan: Given that the exam is only $150, I decided to take it quickly. I’d either pass or know what to study for a retake.
My updated plan: Some people online scared me into thinking the exam was crazy detailed and I did some extra studying the week of that I hadn’t planned on. You do not have to memorize APIs for the exam. This “advise” was unwarranted.
Constraint 3: Videos are not my preferred mechanism for learning
Like with the practitioner of the exam materials around are videos. I don’t like learning from videos. At least A Cloud Guru does a good job with the videos.
The actual exam
I spent 40 minutes going through my first pass and 10 minutes on my second. I take exams quickly so the absolute times aren’t the point. The 40 minute figure was just under twice as long as the first pass for the Practitioner. So if you didn’t have a boatload of extra time when taking the Practitioner, you’ll need to practice with mock exams to get faster, look for buzzwords, etc.
How I actually studied
Unlike the Practitioner, I didn’t keep track of how much I studied. It was a lot though. Maybe 3-4 times as much as the Practitioner level Although I’d say about 25% of that was unnecessary.
Remember to see the linked post if you want to see which resources I actually recommend. I’m posting this because it was hard to find out what anyone actually *did* to study or how long they needed.
See below the table for what I thought about each of these.
| Day | What Studied/How long |
|---|---|
| 2/1-2/16 | Read Packt Book |
| 2/10-2/16 | Start A Cloud Guru videos |
| 2/17-2/19 | Brought my study notes to robotics lab and memorized key facts |
| 2/20-2/22 | Recover from robotics |
| 2/23 | Two mocks from Packt book and resume ACG videos |
| 2/24 | Finish A Cloud Guru videos, do free official sample questions for architect, watch official developer readiness video |
| 2/25 | Free unofficial questions online, ACG mock exam simulator (two attempts) |
| 2/6 | Whizlabs trial and exam 1 |
| 2/27 | Read exam FAQ, do official practice exam, Whizlab exam #2, ACG Simulator |
| 2/28 | Read whitepapers linked from exam guide |
| 3/1 | Re-read my study notes, ACG simulator, Whizlabs #3 and #4, |
| 3/2 | Whizlabs exam #5, All ACG end of module questions, final review of my study guide |
A Cloud Guru (ACG)
Scott had told me A Cloud Guru (ACG) was the best resource nad he was right. There are well designed videos, review questions and a mock exam simulator.
The videos have a number of important features:
- Can adjust speed from .8x to 2x. I watched most videos at 1.5x speed and some at 2x speed.
- The videos are designing around retaining information
- Each video is short.
- Many videos are labs that you can follow along with (muscle memory). I did about half the labs and watched the others.
- Each module ends with key points
- Each module ends with practice questions
- They update the videos periodically to keep them current.
You can do the review questions for each module multiple times and it randomizes the order each time.
The mock exam simulator gives you a few different questions each time. But most are the same. I wish there was a way to get all the questions. This was the only thing I didn’t like about them.
There’s also a forum where you can ask questions if you get stuck. You can also read about the experience of others with the exam. However, this caused me to overstudy! People posted as if ACG didn’t prepare you sufficiently for the exam. I dsagree. See my blog post as to why.
AWS Official Sample Questions
It’s traditional to have some free sample questions for an exam. Oddly, Oracle’s vary extensively for the Associate level.
- Architect – There’s a nice PDF with the sample questions and answers. Since there is a lot of overlap between Architect and Developer,
- SysOps – There’s a PDF of free sample questions. However, there are no question number or answers.
- Developer – Instead of a PDF, the questions are in an official “exam readiness video” I have a few issues with this.
- There’s no transcript or speed up so you have to watch them. (You could just skip the lecture parts and go straight the video, but the content itself is good. Also, it’s a lot of clicking to just do the questions.
- Since the questions are organized by topic, knowing the topic gives you an advantage. A PDF wouldn’t do that.
- The video attempts to explain how to use the process of elimination on answers. It’s a sound idea and works in some cases., In others, they say things like “you can eliminate D because it’s not the answer we are looking for”. That’s not a reason you can use on the test to eliminate something!
Official Practice Exam
The official practice exam from AWS is $20 for 20 questions. Unless you already hold an AWS cert. Since I already passed the practitioner, it was free. The questions were good practice, but definitely not worth twenty bucks!
Packt Book
I don’t recommend Packt’s AWS Developer book. It targets the previous version of the exam and costs $50 (which is a lot for a cert book). I bought it so I could study on the subway. It did save me time in that I remembered the content from the A Cloud Guru videos faster. But so does my study sheet (now) and that’s free. So it’s not that it was bad. It just wasn’t worth $50. (That said if you work with me and want to borrow it, stop by!)
The Packt mocks were more like a review of the book and less like exam questions.
Free Questions Online
- TechTarget’s S3 quiz was good
- CloudThat was for the old exam, but ok for free
- CloudWorks had a good free quiz
- VMExam also has a good free quiz
- Thinkific requires registration. Not worth it for 10 questions. Also, one of the answers is wrong (from another question)
My Study Notes
Bringing my study notes around with me did help me use free moments to study. Even in the robotics lab where I didn’t have a lot of time.
On some level, this was the equivalent of putting something under your pillow and hoping you retain it. But I did pick up my notes periodically during some downtime and memorize things. So it wasn’t useless. And I certainly used the notes shortly before the exam!
Whitepapers & FAQs
The whitepapers and FAQs were recommended my Amazon. Maybe for people not doing the ACG course? They were also recommended by people in teh ACG forums. Maybe those trying to get a perfect score?
Whizlabs
Whizlabs has been good in the past. In fact, Janeice and I even recommended them for the Practitioner. In this case, I was disappointed.
Nineteen or twenty of the 20 questions from the official AWS practice exam appear to be copied word for word into the Whizlab free sample exam or the Whizlab paid practice exam #1. There were also at least a few questions that appear to be copied word for word from ACG questions. I reported this to both AWS and ACG.
It’s unfortunate, because the questions were helpful in preparing. And some clearly were written by Whizlab staff. But some weren’t and that’s a problem.
How I did on the mocks
Many people find it useful to compare how they are doing on mock exams to how someone else did to see if they are “ready” and gauge studying.
There are multiple scores for each representing multiple attempts.
| Source | Scores |
|---|---|
| ACG Basic IAM | 100% 86% |
| ACG EC2 | 92% 100% |
| ACG S3 | 67% 87% |
| ACG Lambda | 73% 91% |
| ACG Dynamo | 92% 88% |
| ACG KMS | 100% 75% |
| ACG Other Services | 78% 91% |
| ACG Developer Theory | 100% 84% |
| ACG Advanced IAM | 100% 100% |
| ACG CloudWatch | 100% 100% |
| ACG Simulator | 72% 82% 86% 89% |
| Packt Exam #1 | 80% |
| Packt Exam #2 | 64%% |
| Whizlabs free | 80% |
| Whizlabs Practice Exam #1 | 77% |
| Whizlabs Practice Exam #2 | 74% |
| Whizlabs Practice Exam #3 | 86% |
| Whizlabs Practice Exam #4 | 74% |
| Whizlabs Practice Exam #5 | 72% |
| AWS Free Architect | 80% |
| AWS Developer Official Readiness | 70% |
| AWS Developer Official Practice Exam | 90% |
| TechTarget | 70% |
| CloudThat | 50% |
| CloudWorks | 63% |
| VMExam | 70% |
| Thinkific | 60% |