First, I'm grateful for this sub because it helped me pass this exam with tips and content.
I have less than a year of experience with AWS but my job asked me to pass this exam. Before this, I passed the Cloud Practitoner exam one year ago.
I did the basics, Stephane course with TD exams.
Being honest, the practice exams humbled me at first. I felt a lot of stress but kept going.
I took notes in Obsidian and then made flashcards and notes for every practice exam review. Each exam took me around 2 hours and 1-2 hours for review since I felt I knew nothing (which was true). I asked Chatgpt to make the flashcards and I was doing it daily.
The exam was hard for me, I thought I was going to fail it. I got my results 7 hours after.
I bought the TD exams on Udemy and then I realized TD also has a website where the exams can be updated. On Udemy there is a possiblity that updates take longer. TD mentions this on their website
These were my scores:
Stephane practice exam (included in the udemy course): 46% (did this one first)
TD:
- Mock 1: 61%
- Mock 2: 63%
- Mock 3: 50%
- Mock 4: 80%
- Mock 5: 72%
- Mock 6: 80%
I took the exams in both review mode and timed mode. I recommend doing 1–2 exams in timed mode to test yourself, and the others in review mode so you can learn along the way without feeling as stressed.
TD exams felt more detailed than the actual exam. During the mock exams, I was learning detailed stuff that was not on the real exam, and I think I probably forgot some of the “basics” because of that.
Then I did 2 retakes:
Stepahne: 46% -> 78%
TD Mock 3: 50% -> 94
Being honest, 65 question per mock, I remembered max 10 questions for both retakes.
Exam Day:
I was feeling confident, had good sleep, breakfast, two cold showers... then exam started and I felt that the 3-4 months studying were gone, long paragraphs, my eyes burning. I flagged 30 questions because I was not sure of the answer.
What I did was answer the questions I knew, skip the ones I didn’t, and flag the ones I wasn’t sure about. I didn’t get to review all the flagged questions, but I answered every question on the exam
After my time was over, I felt disappointed all day until around 10 pm, when I got the Credly email. About 20 minutes later, I got the AWS email.
This was my journey. Feel free to ask anything, as I’d love to give back to this community!!!