AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate) Exam Journey and Tips – Part 3

Introduction

Welcome back, here we are with final part of AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate) Exam Journey and Tips.

In previous two posts, I covered the Background and Preparation parts. This post will be focused on topics like exam registration and taking the exam along with some more tips and experiences.

If you are new to this series, I will encourage you to first read the earlier posts and then the contents in this post will be more logical and easier to follow.

AWS Training & Certification

AWS Training & Certification portal is the place you can manage all the training and certification for AWS. We have already discussed AWS Skill Builder portal. You can access AWS certification from the link on the portal.

It will redirect you to following portal:

and here you can manage your exams, trainings and certificates. I liked the way, all these concerns are connected and are very easy to browse when needed.

Tip-7

When creating your account, make sure that you enter correct first name, last name and other information. It will save you some time if you do not have to make changes later once taking the exam.

AWS Certification Portal

Once you sign-in to the certification portal, you can manage your exams, schedules, certificates, badges etc.

Now, I will not go into details, you can explore these areas yourself. Once ready you can Register for an Exam by click of a button:

Here you can schedule with Pearson VUE or PSI, again by click of a button and you will be directed to the provider website for next steps. For my exam, I selected Pearson VUE, but you can select the PSI option if you like.

Pearson offers OnVue option which allows you to take exam from your home and for my exam I took this option.

Person VUE (OnVUE)

I had give some exam for my microsoft certifications using test center setup. But this time, I went for OnVUE option (covid-19 was one of the reason).

Once you are on that area, you can find all the information and make sure that you meet all these requirements.

The website have many good resources, which allow you to do a system-check and a short video along with FAQs and requirement clearly mentioned.

Tip-8

Run a system test to make sure it is compatible. Pearson VUE advise use of personal computer, however I used a work laptop but I had admin rights and laptop had no restrictions, plus the system test gave ok signal to me and it worked fine during the exam.

Tip-9

Arrange a separate room with clear workspace as per requirements mentioned for the exam. You will be required to upload the photos before exam and a person will also do a check (using webcam) of your room and it will be very easy if everything is setup according to requirements.

I had setup my workspace in the living room, and I had the whole place to myself during the exam.

There are very strict rules about anyone else entering the room or you moving away from camera once the exam is started, so make sure that this doesn’t happen at all and no interruptions during your exam.

Tip-10

Book an appointment when you are ready. If you can not see timeslot you wanted, refresh the page after a while and new appointments sometimes become available after a while.

Credit Card Payment Surprise

This might not happen to you, but I had this situation so wanna share if somebody also caught up in this issue.

My credit card had some restriction and it declined payment when I tried to pay for the exam from the Pearson website service. I tried again and again and again and then my Pearson VUE account was restricted due to multiple failed attempts and I could no longer even login.

(In the background I checked with my bank and it turns out that it was security feature which I have to setup using my bank online portal. I set that up, but now I couldn’t register for exam due to lock).

Person website FAQ mention to make a call to a service center associate and discuss this with them. So I make a call, it took around 10 minutes waiting but finally someone pickup. It was a lady with Indian accent, very polite and understanding and when I explained the situation to her, she forwarded a request to some other team and told me that issue will be resolved in 24-48 hours.

I was all ready for the exam, so asked her if someway it can be expedited and she advised me to try again in few hours otherwise I have to wait. I followed as she recommended and few hours later my account was unlocked.

Now, during these few hours, I went to Facebook page of PersonVUE and there were a lot of angry comments from different peoples for various issues. For a moment, I had doubt about the service, but later, as I mentioned before, my account was unlocked in few hours and I did not encounter any other issue (first one was also not really issue on their side).

Once payment is done, you will receive an email for further instructions like run a system test, how to sign-in on exam days and others. check those details and make sure you understand them fully.

Tip-11

If you run into some issues, do not hesitate to contact the support personnel. Explain your issue to them and they will help you.

Taking the Exam

I joined to exam 30 minutes before start (15 mins earlier is advised for check-in process). Went through initial check-in process and once that part was done, I was greeted by an examiner and was asked few questions and examiner did a visual inspection of the workspace (if your workspace is already as per their specs, then this part is very smooth) and once they are satisfied, my exam was launched and I was now allowed to continue to answer the questions.

First question come up on the screen and straight away I knew the answer and selected it and clicked Next button for another question.

Ok, next question was difficult, I wasn’t sure, read it again, still doesn’t make sense, so I selected a possible answer, clicked Mark for Review button and moved to next question.

For next few questions, I had similar feeling, wasn’t sure about answers, so I marked those too for review for later and moved on to next questions.

Tip-12:

If you are stuck on a question for few minutes, leave it by marking for review, move to next question. You will get a chance to review all the answers at the end. So do not panic, handle the questions you are comfortable with answers and leave other for later.

Tip-13:

I have a habit of finished exams as soon as possible. You may also have similar way of taking exams. I have this thinking, that if I do not know the answer, sitting idle and thinking is not gonna give me the answer.

So, I was in hurry with this certification exam too. I was not getting right answers earlier, so my morale was not high.

However, I didn’t wanted to gave up that easy, so took a long breath and slowed down a little.

Instead of rushing towards answers I used following techniques for evaluating the answers:

• In scenario based questions, they start with scenario and then there is the question and possible choices. What I did was read the question first, then scenario and then the possible choices. This helped me to filter out non-relevant answers from the questions and once wrong answers are out, I can focus on right answers and see which one is better choice for this scenario.

• From the answer choices, try to filter out wrong answers, e.g. if question is about data storage, answer with an Elastic Load Balancer is highly likely not gonna be correct answer.

• If question is asking to choose between SQS and AWS Kineses and context is thousands of IoT devices then answer with Kinesis is more aligned with question than answer which mentions RedShift.

This improved the situation and now I was not rushing to answers and was not spending too much time on single question either because I could mark those for later review. That’s how I continued till the last questions (there were 65 questions, I guess. But this number can change).

Tip-14

Try not to be over confident with 1st correct answer. Still read other answer choices. Sometimes there are more than 1 correct answer and then you have to pick the better one.

Mark for Later Review

Once I was done with the questions, I still had 25 minutes left. So all the questions were presented for review and I start with those, which I intentionally left earlier.

I don’t know what had changed, may be I was not taking exam pressure now compare to when I was in the beginning. But when I read those questions again they made more sense to me, I even change few of the answers from those questions based on current understand. I did this for all those questions which I marked for later review and I still had 10 minutes left.

I started with other questions, but I was confident about those anyway and was very much tired at the same time, so still 7 minutes left I Stopped reviewing the answers. We have to stop at some point 🙂

Tip-15

This exam is full of different scenario based question and you may get tired with this constant thinking and scene switching. Do not give up, its manageable and at that point you had done this much effort to take this exam, so there is no reason not give your full effort till end. Take couple of pauses in between questions but keep going.

As I said earlier, I am typically not good with reviews and try to use every last second of a given exam, but I stayed there and reviewed my answers and this definitely helped me in passing this exam.

Exam Result

When you have reviewed all the questions and your answers, you can click End Review button. A dialog with prompt you that if you are sure, because there is no turning back after this point 🙂

Click yes, and I am positive you will see “Passed” on your monitor to signal that you have successfully passed the exam.

AWS takes typically 5 business days to process the result and award you certificate. However, in my case it was available within 12 hours.

Final Tip

I will encourage you to prepare for exam, understand the concepts and apply this knowledge by doing hands-on exercises and you will be able to handle any question if your concepts are clear and you have good understanding of the technology and services.

Of course there will be questions you may not know the answers and its ok. There is room for wrong answers but try every questions, read it fully and try to answer it with best of your ability. Challenge yourself and be confident.

I hope that these posts will help you in some capacity for preparing and taking your AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate) exam and I wish you best of luck.

Summary

Register with AWS skill builder, AWS training and certification and those are linked with Pearson VUE or other providers. They all have very good resources as per their domains. Follow exam instructions strictly. If possible, take the day off from work on exam day and be confident when taking the exam.

Let me know if you have some questions or comments. Till next time, Happy Learning.