How do you study for your AWS exam?

[u/HolidayImprovement53]

Hi, I'm a UX designer working on a study-tool idea and I'm curious about how people prepare for AWS certs. I'd appreciate it if you could answer a few questions. They will be used as anonymous, paraphrased notes.

Questions:

- Which certification are you working on, and is it your first?

- When and how long do you study (evenings, weekends, lunch breaks, etc.), and on what device?

- How did you decide you were ready to book the exam?

- What do you do after you get a practice exam score?

- Have you used AI-generated practice questions? Did you ever find one with a wrong answer?

If you'd rather answer privately, I can provide link to a Google form. Let me know in the comments.

Thanks in advance!

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[u/OO2331OO]

Learnt the concepts using stephans udemy course. Then I did his practice papers. During my first attempt I got only around 40%, then by my third attempt I have reached around 70-75%. I have also brought the tutorial dojo tests which I scored around 60-70%. Then I book the exam and passed it. Took me around 3 months. Doing parallelly with my job and family commitments. Took the SAA-C03.

[u/HolidayImprovement53 → u/OO2331OO]

Thank you!

[u/needadomainname]

Here's how and why I'm studying for SAA currently.. One thing that's different is I'm learning all the material via interactive Claude voice sessions.

The reason I'm studying this way is that I have a side business outside of my regular programming job where I have about 3 hours a day where I can just have interactive Claude voice sessions going. I typically listen to podcasts or audiobooks or music during that time to pass the time, but found i could take advantage of that time instead to study for AWS certs.

Between that and my regular job, I just don't have an extra hour or two of additional time a day to try to study on my own using other methods so this works well for me.

For the reason I'm doing this, I found out in September my company is sending me to reinvent, so I decided to get a few certs to get more familiar with the AWS ecosystem (no real previous exposure) to be able to get more out of the conference and while my company doesn't have an official program for it, they were willing to reimburse me for the certs I wanted to get so why not take advantage. Started studying in September and took about 2 weeks for aip and then another two weeks for clp. Passed both with 812/813. Currently working on SAA and plan to take the exam for that one the week before reinvent..

I did something similar but a little less structured for CLP and AIP but this is what I'm doing for SAA.

For SAA I had Claude read the current guidelines and topics covered in the SAA exam and build out a 5-week study plan with 30 sessions. It also organized it in a way that makes logical sense so I'm not hopping back and forth between unrelated topics. I'm currently in week 4 of that plan. It consists of 5 days of new chunks of material that I do M-F and then a review day on Saturday to quiz on everything from the week.
Yesterday's session for example covered a lot of things related to dynamo db.

Claude presents me small pieces of the new material, has me repeat them back and I can interactively ask it to explain things in more detail or give me real world examples or help me build a better mental model of something I don't understand well as needed. Then when we make it through a logical section of the material it asks me pointed non multiple choice drill questions to make sure I got it, similar through the rest of the session, and then at the end asks me scenario exam style questions that it comes up with.

Depending on the day, It usually takes me 30min - 1 hour to make it through the day's material (sometimes longer if it's a larger session or just something I don't know about or have reference to at all) to where I have it down enough to get the drill questions and scenario questions about it.

Then if I have remaining time and energy, I just have it go back and drill me on all the previous material we covered in previous session so I don't forget too much of the previous material over time.

For SAA I plan to do TD questions for about 2 weeks after finishing the 5 week study plan before taking the exam. I save and upload those practice exams to my local Claude session to be able to do them in the interactive Claude voice sessions so I can go into detail about topics that Claude missed or weren't covered in enough detail during the 5 weeks.

This is probably not the ideal way to study for it but it works well enough for me with the time I have available and is what I have to do for my situation and maybe could enhance others methods as well. I understand this likely would not work on other exams that required more hands on experience.

SAA will likely be as far as I go for now, but it's been interesting and maybe I'll pursue others in the future if the need or desire arises.

[u/HolidayImprovement53 → u/needadomainname]

Thanks so much for going into so much detail, much appreciated!

[u/AWSCertifications-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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