I passed SC-300 today, and honestly, this was one of the hardest exams I’ve ever taken — harder than CompTIA Security+, at least for me.
I got a good score, but during the exam I had that awful feeling that I was getting everything wrong, even though I knew I was answering more than half of the questions consciously and based on concepts I had actually studied.
The exam was exhausting. A lot of questions had so much text. Some scenarios felt unnecessarily long, and there were many, many questions involving AD DS / hybrid identity concepts. At some point, I genuinely felt like the exam was trying to beat me by exhaustion more than by technical difficulty.
I finished with around 10 minutes left — maybe even less — and I had to answer two questions almost randomly because I was running out of time.
Surprisingly, I got only one question about Global Secure Access.
A few thoughts for anyone preparing:
MeasureUp could have helped me more in terms of getting used to the exam question style and timing. However, when I tried using it previously for MD-102, I felt the content was outdated for that exam, so I didn’t fully trust it this time. Still, I would recommend using MeasureUp as a test-taking practice tool, especially to get used to long scenarios and the way Microsoft phrases questions.
What helped me the most was building my own study material with Claude. That was honestly a huge help. I used it to organize concepts, explain difficult topics, create scenarios, compare services, and practice with realistic questions.
Topics I would strongly recommend reviewing:
Hybrid identity and AD DS concepts
Password Hash Synchronization, PTA, federation, Seamless SSO
Conditional Access
Identity Protection: user risk vs sign-in risk
PIM and privileged access
Access Reviews
Entitlement Management and Access Packages
External identities and cross-tenant access
Workload identities
App registrations vs Enterprise applications
Delegated permissions vs application permissions
Defender for Cloud Apps and OAuth apps
My advice: don’t just memorize definitions. The exam is scenario-heavy, and you really need to understand what each Microsoft Entra feature is used for, when to use it, and what problem it solves.
Also, manage your time. The long questions can drain you.
I’m very happy and relieved that I passed on the first attempt, but wow… this exam was intense.

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Passed the MS-102 yesterday with an 802 on my second attempt. I’m pretty happy about it because this exam was a beast. It is not only broad, but it also goes deep into many Microsoft 365 topics.

I studied for about five months total. I took my first attempt after four months and barely failed. After another three to four weeks of studying, I passed.

Even though I work in Microsoft 365 every day, I still found this to be one of the more challenging exams. Hands-on experience is a must. I highly recommend creating your own Microsoft 365 tenant with the 30-day E5 trial and using ChatGPT to build practice labs.

One thing I learned after passing is that MS-102 by itself does not give you the Microsoft 365 Administrator Expert certification. You still need to complete one of the prerequisite exams.

For me, the next step is SC-300, Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator. From what I’ve read, there is about 40–50% crossover with MS-102, so my goal is to study and take it within the next 30 days.

How I prepared for the exam

-MS Learn

-Created my own MS365 Tenant by signing up for a 30 day trial with an E5 license

-Used Chatgpt to create labs based on the exam requirements

-For practice questions I used MeasureUp Practice which seem harder then the actually test itself, MS practice Tests and Chatgpt

-for Vids I used MS-102 Course with SIM on Udemy by John Christopher and the MS-102 MS365 admin Course playlist from Cloud 365 Training on YouTube

Hello everyone,

I recently bought a 100% discount coupon from a Reddit user, which is valid until the end of June. I used it to schedule my Endpoint Administrator certification exam for June 17th at a testing center in Chennai.

However, I unexpectedly have to relocate for a new job, and a lot of things are happening all at once right now. Because of this, I don't want to take the exam half-prepared. Based on your experience, is it possible for me to cancel this appointment and reuse the same coupon to reschedule the exam for a center in Delhi or as an online exam?

Thanks in advance for your help!

The funny thing is that I was absolutely convinced I’d failed. During the exam, I felt like I was guessing far more than I should have been, so seeing the pass result was a huge surprise.

Now for the big question: with Microsoft reportedly moving away from MS-102 and introducing the new AB-650 certification, which is expected to focus more heavily on AI administration, Copilot, intelligent agents, cloud security, and modern Microsoft 365 management, would you still pursue MS-102 and lock in the Expert certification while it’s available? Or would you wait for the new qualification and skip the Expert badge altogether?

What are you all doing, and why?

Has anyone else been looking into the new AB-650 certification that’s expected to replace MS-102?

I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth pushing ahead with MS-102 now and earning the Microsoft 365 Administrator Expert certification, or whether I should just wait for AB-650 and follow the new pathway instead.

From what I’ve read, AB-650 is expected to have a stronger focus on AI, Copilot, agents, cloud security, and modern Microsoft 365 administration. The downside is that if I wait, I’d likely miss out on earning the Expert title that comes with the current MS-102 path.

What are everyone’s thoughts? Are you planning to get MS-102 while it’s still around, or are you waiting for AB-650?

Finished my SC-500 with 4 minutes to go. 2 cases. Did review all of the sections.

• Lots of Security Copilot,
• Azure and Ms Entra built-in RBA
• system vs used managed identities.
• Data connectors linking to Security Copilot.
• Lots of Azure Key Vault questions.

Did use the official SC-500 Microsoft Learn course and the Secure AI Microsoft Learn course to study.

Already had the SC-100 Cybersecurity Architect Expert.

Now the waiting begins.

Hi Everyone,

I am currently working in tech support and want to move into O365 roles with better career growth.

How can I move into an O365 Administrator or Intune Administrator role? As a beginner, should I start with MS-102 or MD-102?

Also please suggest some good online course.

Thanks

Hello everyone,

Just a quick warning/guidance regarding the new MFA process in Microsoft exams.

I have seen a lot of people getting tripped up by this, so I am posting/sharing this to make sure no one is caught off guard and you are able to take your exams stress-free.

Good luck everyone!

Got a 626. Not even sure how I got that high of a score I guessed on so much.

The test felt like a purview and defender exam. I hardly was asked much else.

Feel like Im way further away on this cert then expected and need to use Purview to pass this.

Was shocked it was so heavy on purview. Lol I may need to pivot and look at setting up a lab or doing some of the work at home with a lab.

Practice tests felt like no help at all. If you don't have hands on with purview and defender I feel like you're kinda screwed on these

I just passed my MD-102 with a score of 700.

A pass is a pass, and I’m not mad about it!

I spent the last month and a half studying. Between working full-time, caring for my wife while she's been sick, and raising two young children, finding study time was a challenge. On top of that, I have ADHD, so I sometimes struggle with understanding and retaining technical concepts.

A few things helped me tremendously:

• Taking practice quizzes with Copilot and Claude
• Having AI explain my incorrect answers in a way that actually made sense to me
• Using Microsoft Learn for the official content and then asking Copilot to break down concepts I didn't understand into simpler terms
• Writing down notes and reviewing them every day
• Getting as much hands-on experience with Intune as possible

I also used MeasureUp, but personally I didn't find it very helpful for this exam. The wording felt awkward at times, and many of the topics it emphasized didn't show up on my test. Your experience may vary, but I got much more value from hands-on practice, Microsoft Learn, and AI-assisted quizzes.

If you're preparing for MD-102, my advice is:

• Get hands-on experience with Intune
• Take lots of practice questions
• Review your notes regularly
• Use AI tools to help explain concepts and walk through incorrect answers
• Gradually increase the difficulty of your practice tests

To everyone currently studying: keep going. The process can be frustrating, but you can absolutely do it.

Good luck!

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Honestly, I was a bit taken a back by the questions. Microsoft Learn didn’t really help that much on estimating how hard the exam was gonna be. I barely studied for the thing and went into it without any background in Intune or Entra ID.

The content I used to study for this:

- Udemy John Christopher: MD-102 lectures
- Microsoft Learn: Mostly the practice exam, and I would use their after-exam Learn feature.
- Udemy Joel Palmer practice exams: They were pretty good for simulating exam questions. It’s not the same as the actual exam, but it helped me understand Intune and Entra management in more depth. Barely used it though. I did a practice exam for A, B, C, and D, the mastery exams, then did a mock exam on A, B, C, and mastery.

Total learning time was around 40 hours over about 5 weeks. Edit: now I think about it like 30 hours

The exam itself was a bit hard. The access to Microsoft Learn did help a lot with niche questions and deeper configuration and management questions. You can guesstimate some of the questions too, like Autopilot always being the answer unless told otherwise, such as offline provisioning. A good understanding of the core fundamentals can get you through a lot of questions by process of elimination.

Also, if you know coding, you can kind of think, “Where would they put this?” and somehow that worked for me lol.

Honestly genuinely shocked I passed maybe it was luck or something but good luck to others taking the exam. Another thing I did it online and that possibly made it a lot more stressful with all the rules with onVue.

I am looking for some more information on what practice exams people would recommend for the MD 102 exam? So far, I have completed the one provided directly from Microsoft at the end of the study guide, and I answered roughly 95% correct.

Now I am currently working through the MeasureUp practice exam, and am struggling on the questions asked. Some of the wording seems off, and some question topics seem either out of the scope of the provided exam guide or too detailed/difficult. Ive been reviewing the attached learn resources after each question, and have been asking AI for different explanations.

Does anyone have any recommendations on other practice exams, or is the MeasureUp exam the most realistic one available?

Thanks!

TL;DR:

This was one of the hardest certification exams I’ve taken, especially because a lot of it focused on Defender, Entra, and other Microsoft 365 security tools that I don’t use regularly in my university IT role. I had 65 questions on this exam. Even though most my study resources were CBT Nuggets, MeasureUp, Microsoft Learn practice assessment, and AI tools, I still felt incomplete. Luckily the hands-on practice in an E5 developer tenant helped fill in some gaps. During the exam, I moved quickly, flagged a lot of questions, and relied heavily on the built-in Microsoft Learn access during review to look up nuanced topics. I ended up passing with a 763...not a pretty score, but a pass is a pass. My biggest advice: don’t rely on brain dumps, study the official documentation, because this exam tests very specific, detail-heavy concepts.

Long-form:

So, let me start up by saying, this is one of the toughest certification exams that I have been through. From the first ten questions, it was all Defender related, and it was really a “what the fuck is this shit moment.” That said, I passed today with a 763. Is it the prettiest score? Not by a long shot. But the certificate says passed, and that is all that matters. I am going to try to just spill out everything I can remember from the exam. You can view my MD-102 take here.

For context, my organization just started using Intune in the past couple of years. I was given access about a year ago. Speaking of given access, I am not a global administrator. I work in a university, so we use a distributed IT model. That means, I handle my unit (using administrative units), and that is it. I do not have access to compliance policies, conditional access, PIM, multi factor settings, etc. We are a Google org, so we d do not use Teams, SharePoint, or OneDrive (or Microsoft 365 Backup for that matter). We also do not use Defender XDR (after learning it, I wish we did), nor do we use Purview. However, we are hybrid, and we use PTA. Sadly, I was not part of Entra tenant setup, so I had zero experience with that. Thankfully, I work closely with our GA, and was able to build a picture for some things.

To help me with the exam, a friend of mine from another organization had an E5 Developer tenant and let me play around with it. I believe that really helped me paint the bigger picture. I was able to build conditional access controls, set up passwordless login, and see how PIM works. They also bought the Defender XDR add-on which included Defender for Endpoint and Purview. To see labels and retention policies (policy tips, watermark, etc) was very cool. On the Defender side, being able to see incidents (using the fake PowerShell command) was cool as well. However, I really could not grasp a secure score or vulnerability exposure as it's tough to get real-world alerts.

For studying, I used the video series from CBT Nuggets. In the past, I always enjoy CBT Nuggets. However. while it was some useful information there, it felt incomplete. I gathered the transcripts, and ChatGPT and Claude both discovered that it was missing information from some major exam domains. The trainer also said that they were going to go over concepts but never returned to it. As always, I always try to use some exam preparation tool. This time it was MeasureUp. In the past, MeasureUp really came in clutch. While the practice exams felt authentic, a lot of chatter online said that it did not come close to the actual exam. I must agree with them. While it allowed me to understand some concepts better (I.e. ZAP, anti-spam policies), it was no where close to the exam. I felt that it gives like 20% of the real deal. I then looked at the Microsoft Learn practice assessment. And that was an eye opener. However, even for that, it felt incomplete and kind of rush as an afterthought. I tried using ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini (NotebookLM specifically), but it could only help me with information I got from CBT, MeasureUp and the practice assessment. Maybe if I set up a MCP server that pulls directly from MS Learn, maybe that will help me in the future.

As far as the exam itself, I felt like it was very unfamiliar information. As I stated before, the first 10 questions were straight Defender questions, and I had no clue what they meant. Luckily, MS Learn can be used, but more on that later. Since I only had 1 hour and 40 minutes, and 65 questions, my strategy was to blast through the exam and try to answer questions in 30 seconds. If I did not know the answer, then simply mark it for review, and move on. When I got to questions 59, I had five scenario-based questions where I could not review and had to answer them on the spot. You cannot even go back. I am assume you could find the answer in another question based on the same scenario. Most of these were easy, except one. As far as my questions that I marked, I had 39 of them with 40 minutes left. As you can tell, I really was not confident in myself. However, it was open book. Last time when I took my MD-102 exam, I tried to slide the MS Learn window, and my exam crash 3 times. This time, I kept the slider in the middle. Even though I was on a 24” monitor, it was not too bad, and I can search and look at the question at the same time. As I mentioned, my study material was not as top notched as I hoped. Some of the questions that threw me for a loop were: where to find ZAP reports (I know what ZAP was), can you add multiple groups within groups whether it's security of M365, setting up GPS-based conditional access policies when passwordless is configured, finding Standard settings for Defender for Cloud Apps, exact data match versus trainable classifiers, and what minimal number of Enterpriseregistration you need for multiple domains. The way that MS Learn works is that it starts at learn.microsoft.com every time you open it. Sometimes your search query brings up AI which has the references you need, and sometimes it brings up nonsense (Microsoft Fabric was popular today). You really need to know what you are searching for. However, during my review, I was able to find the exact answer for a lot of my questions and change the answers. I feel like without that, I would have failed. When my review as over, I had two minutes left. But once I hit submit, I saw “PASSED”, I was so relieved.

So, if you are studying for this exam, it is possible to do it without experience. I do not recommend brain dumps because you cannot be certain what questions will be asked. Not to mention, you really are not retaining information. But I will say, review the documentation. This exam picks the most nuance topic, and quizzes you on it.

Well, I think that’s enough for now. I am done with certifications for a while, and now that I have my Expert badge, I feel accomplished. Unless my organization grants me access to something else (I doubt it), I do not see a need to get more. If you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them and hopefully I can help the next person.

Reviewed in a week. Here's what helped me:

1. Skillwithlevelup https://skillupwithlevelup.com/ - I used my work account to register. It had hands-on lab + i got the voucher by passing 80% of the exam.
2. Microsoft practice exam - took it until i got consistent 90% score
3. Mapping MSLearn to concepts/topics that i always got wrong (example: question was which of the following is a user risk? answer: leaked credentials - mapped in my brain the ms learn keyword which was: what are risk detections?)
4. Always use MSLearn when studying

Content of exam:
59 standard questions
1 case study (7 questions)

On the exam, i answered ALL questions as fast as possible and marked the ones for review. I had 45 minutes left on the exam and on the review process, i used MS Learn + CTRL F to find they keywords.

Background:

• Worked as MS Partner Support Engineer for 5 years
• Passed MS102 back in September 2025 with 3 months prep for exam

I hope this helps!