AWS Solution Architect Associate Exam Experience

 

Recently, took an exam at the test center during this Covid lock down time. It definitely my first time wearing a mask to a test center throughout the exam.

To share my experience on preparing for the exam and as well on how I felt about the exam format comparing with other exam that I have taken and written. Yes, I am part of the team who developed VCP and VCAP over the last two years.

Experience

I took the AWS SAA course last year with no experience with AWS. This was really my virgin experience with AWS from interface to using it in the lab. I even sign up for the AWS fundamental class which is one day before the three days course. After which, I also took the exam preparation course for half a day. Do note there are two exams, I took the one that is retiring. The different is the retiring exam has one more section while the new one removed it.

So if you are new like myself, it is really good to do all the above courses that I have attended. It really gives me the great understanding of AWS and their services and as well a good hands on into the interface.

After the course, I couldn't find much time until the COVID lock down. So I took the opportunity to study for it. I took up the Whizlabs AWS SAA Practice Exam. It is not a dump but it gives me a great understanding of more than what the course have covered. This is what I appreciate about it. I greatly recommend having it as a good follow up.

The actual exam is no way near to the practice exam, but the format and the way questions are asked are some sort similar. The exam took about 130 mins and you need to pass by 72% for 65 questions. If you worked that would, that gives you about 18 questions to answer wrongly.

I finished the exam in 110 mins. But I must say I did complete the 65 questions earlier but I flagged out 30 over questions to review. I did three time of review and every time I did that I read the question in detail and in the end made some changes to my answers.

My advice would be to review any questions you are not confident of and marked them to review. Really read the question several times as some of the questions are rather tricky.

Exam Format

Now to the exam format. I felt the exam questions format is not very consistent as you can have a question with choose two over four answers while some are choose two over five answers. Unlike the VMware Exam that I have developed.

The questions do have some tricky wordings and if you missed it, no matter how experience you are with AWS, you can get that answer wrong. That was what I didn't like about it. I felt that exam are created to test one's experience and knowledge and not testing them to figure out the one word that could make the whole answer turn the other way. It is like spotting the difference.

Some questions tested on memory work which was found in VMware exam in the past. But today, that has mostly all been removed unless it's a number that you would use that very often. In this exam, I hated these type of questions. Though there are not many of such questions, if I were a solution architect, I would not have memorize these information. That is what documentation page is for.

In summary, I think the exam really make me study hard for it. Have not been study this hard for an exam especially for technology that I am familiar with. However, if AWS can improve those three way of testing a candidate, the exam can be of a better quality.

p.s. no dumps was used in this whole process. Pure hardwork was involved.