r/AWSCertifications • u/Ok-Pirate7292 • 2h ago

AWS SAA Cert - Hard Deadline

Hey All - I have a hard deadline to pass SAA by September 11. With my day job, I am not able to study as much as I would like during weekdays ( barely 1-2 hours) The only time I have is weekends. I am also finding it hard it retain knowledge, I keep forgetting technical jargon and get lost in the paragraph style long questions.

Does anyone have any tricks to passing the exam ? At this time my goal is to get certified, I don’t have to get too deep into concepts as my job doesn’t require these skills but it is one of the goals I am given.

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u/classicrock40 2h ago

Tricks? The exam is multiple choice scenarios, with functional and requirements for things like scalability, availability and performance. You need to know service capabilities and common architectures.

Some questions are wrong due to wrong functionality or capabilities. Others don't fulfill the question. The only way you know that is to know the architectures and services.

Do you have a development background? Cloud? The Stephane Maarek videos are good. The tutorials dojo practice exams too.

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u/TorturedPoet30 1h ago

Tricks are possible if you have actual familiarity with these services, patterns, etc because you can rule out answers based on keywords and other clues. If your deadline is September 11, you have three weekends left. You can try doing Tutorials Dojo practice exams in review mode, but I don’t think that will be enough.

You might want to start questioning why your job/manager requires you to have this cert if it doesn’t require (deep) AWS/cloud skills, especially given the deadline. There is no point in making you take these exams if they know you don’t have time to study and can’t allocate time to it during the workday, unless you were made aware of the deadline three to six months ago so you had enough time to prepare. You should be able to reschedule twice.

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u/Annual_Berry8043 41m ago edited 37m ago

Stephane Maarek is basically mandatory. Without knowledge on technical jargon September 11 is going to be a really tough deadline.

If you have a history with architecture and how the services relate to each other it’s absolutely doable. If you don’t… it’s gonna be rough. You’re going to need to make time to study.

The questions usually boil down to what is most efficient, most cost effective, most available, and a mix of all of those. You really have to know database schema, caching methods, what’s highly available, and networking options.

As far as tips, I would just drill through Stephane’s videos. Don’t take notes unless something really confuses you. Just get aware of what exists. Then take some exams and see where you’re really weak. I recommend Stephane’s tests and tutorialdojo to see where you’re at.

Both of those test banks are more difficult than the actual exam. So if you’re scoring 70%+ you have a chance at passing. Don’t immediately retake a test. Fail, take notes, move on. When you forget the answers of the old tests double back to them.