Passing the AWS developer certificate course

#aws #cloud

Context

My company (Appian) provides a generous offering of ~$7,000 AUD per year for self-study. The catch though is you have to pass in order to receive the full subsidy.
For a while now, I've been eyeing for this certification, finally comited and booked the exam with 2 months to study for it.
Did the studying outside of work (this involved nights and weekends).

Started to watch Stephanie Maarek's Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate 2021 - NEW!
For the first few weeks, I watched the lectures and did the follow along.
The pace though was a bit slow so by week 4 / half way, I only finished around 30% of the course content.
To speed things up, I skipped the follow along and watch the videos on 2x speed (sometimes 3x with the javascript)

document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 3.0

Did the above method for 3 weeks. With 1 week left, and around 80% done. I took 3 days of work off and watched the rest of it with 2 days to spare.

On the last 2 days, I did 8 practice papers from Stephanie and Neal's practice papers on Udemy (see below).
The practice paper revision process was:
1. Speed run the practice paper and see what area I was weak on.
2. Do some revision (usually reviewing the lecture slides and these github notes)
3. Practice the same test again to make sure I remember the mistakes and move on to the next test. Since the above process was to make sure I understand my content, I sped through each practice paper (completing them on average in 30 minutes - it's either I knew the answer or I don't).
Near the end though, because of the time constraint, I just practice the paper without doing the revision. At this point I felt like I have a decent chance of passing the exam
Score on each practice exam (I didn't do it in this order, rather a mix of both courses but generally starting from Practice Test 1 to 5)
"Practice Exams | AWS Certified Developer" by Stephanie Maarek

Practice Test Attempt Reattempt

Practice 1 66% 95%

Practice 2 70% 93%

Practice 3 70% 90%

Practice 4 80% 89%

Practice 5 81% 95%
"AWS Certified Developer Associate Practice Exam" By Neal Davis

Practice Test Attempt Reattempt

Practice 1 69% -

Practice 2 80% 92%

Practice 3 73% -

Practice 4 81% -

Booked in on-line with PSI, process was painless / pretty easy.
Went to the in-person exam at Bella Vista , couldn't find parking though so glad I went in 4 hours early (Parked at Mcdonalds nearby and did some more practice papers before the test).
The actual exam process was a computer and all the questions on a slide (UI was outdated and a bit laggy).
Finished the exam in an hour. ## Results
I passed the AWS developer associate exam with 905/1000.
Got Appian to re-imburse the amount in full 😁.

Hope it helps! Feel free to ping me on twitter (@kndwindev) if you have any questions!