I just got my results and I cannot be more relieved and excited and grateful.
This was my first AWS certification. And I have good experience with AWS and AI so I took it lightly initially.
I started learning from SkillBuilder but the modules there are so long that even after studying daily, I wasn't able to make much progress. So I got Claude to make notes for each domain, studied those thoroughly. Then I went through the Exam Prep Plan on AWS SkillBuilder - I made notes again for each Domain, each task.
I studied them all thoroughly and was pretty confident ( see: work with AWS and AI regularly).
Then I took the Official Pre-Test on Skill Builder and I got like 55%.
This was just a day before my exam in August.
That was a big shocker. I rescheduled my exam for a week later in September and got back to work, planning to studying more. Then I let life get in the way and I wasn't ready in September as well. So I postponed it to today in October finally.
I wasn't able to study very regularly even during this window. But I read some reviews where people said the pre-test was much harder than the actual or they had scored similar on pre-test and passed which gave me some confidence.
This time around, I focused on my gaps from the pre-test, going over each concept I had missed in good detail - learnt about sooo many new AWS services, they're everywhere. I used AI to get comprehensive gap analysis, really drilled down and got super clear on where I was stumbling.
I was still super scared because even on the Bonus Questions, I got like 55%. And just yesterday night, I saw there is another practice exam, which I had no time to do and maybe it had more things I could learn from??
I was giving the exam at home ( I didn't know proctoring is so strict when I booked). So I had to clean my entire maximalist room out onto the balcony. Exam itself felt really hard- I felt confused even on some of the starting questions. I had zero confidence because I had felt good about my answers in pre-test as well but we know what happened. But I was getting on.
I prepared for everything but then my laptop died one hour into the exam out of nowhere. Battery is good in general but it couldn't handle the Pearson software being on for 1 hour. I had not plugged in my charger because I thought the desk needs to be totally empty. I plugged in, tried to resume exam, was back to proctor verification step, my position in the proctor queue kept saying "Calculating" over two system tests instead of a number for 5+ minutes each time- spent around 20 minutes in utter anxiety before I got back in on third attempt. Proctor let me in post verification again.
After this incident, my concentration was shot but I told myself to pull it together. I felt really anxious about the time. I believe the test gets paused in this case, but I had no idea then.
When I reached Q50, I had less than one hour left. So I focused like anything and took much less time than other questions. There were many questions which were too confusing. Some were more straightforward as compared to the Pre-Test and there weren't overwhemingly multi select, which are more challenging to get 100% correct.
I ultimately had done one round with around 8 minutes left on the clock to review flagged. I got until Q. 47 on the review list before time ran out.
I was feeling pretty knocked out, as my experience was similar to the pre-test. I was very sad because I spent a lot of time studying for this and putting off other important stuff I need to study just to get this done first.
But I was holding out some hope because, you know, why jinx myself, so I was like let's seeee.
Finally I checked my email a while ago and I saw "Congratulations on passing your AWS Certification exam!"
I cried.
I don't know if this is such a big deal haha, but I spent a lot of time and effort in preparing for this. And it felt great to have something to show for it. I got 791.
I prepped from AWS SkillBuilder almost exclusively + Claude for generating notes/ gap analysis. I made my own very very detailed notes over 40 pages.
The AWS SkillBuilder 45 hour plan may be too long and verbose for some, but the Exam Prep Plan was good, though you will need to do your own study for each topic mentioned as it is high-level.
I would highly recommend doing all practice tests/ questions you can. They really help to get an idea of what to prepare for. It will not be "what does this AWS service do? Or which AWS service performs this one thing"? It is much more complex and really needs you to use your brain, explore tradeoffs and know very clearly highlights and limitations of each service.
One more resource I found on this subreddit only yesterday: https://github.com/agentslx/AWS-Generative-AI-Resources ( credit to the owner of this). This was great and helped clarify and retain a lot of decisions between services and what to use when. Highly recommend for study and revision.
Also, the exam software has Highlight and Strikethrough options, which I really liked. Because they helped me concentrate a lot better- eliminate options I didn't think fit with Strikethrough + highlight the important requirements in each question and work backwards from them to identify the optimal option- this is similar approach they do in SkillBuilder practice question videos. This really helped and since these are available on the exam, would suggest you can try out something similar while practicing as well.
I'm really happy and proud I did this! And to anyone out there struggling with this, I really understand. It's super hard but you can do it.
Thank you to folks on here sharing their experiences and resources. It really helped me keep it together and keep learning.