AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam (tips and tricks) — Part 1
So I took the AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam last week and managed to pass it with pretty good score. This is part 1 in a series of posts where I explain the process I followed to prepare for this 3 hour brain drain.
Part 1 — Theoretical learning
Part 2 — Technical preparation
Part 3 — Exam tips and time management
By now, you should be familiar with the content the exam covers, the topic breakdowns and percentage.
This blog covers the techniques I used to effectively absorb a lot of information. There may be some that you must have used/heard of them.
The problem
It’s really hard to obtain real world experience with all of the services covered in this exam even though I’ve years of AWS experience. It makes learning difficult for someone like me who learns by doing.
I never liked the idea of having only theoretical knowledge without the backing of real experience so I made sure I ran a scenario in the console or the command line.
A little context
About 6 months ago, I decided to sit for this exam.
As usual, I kept coming up with excuses to not study (I have a busy work life, personal life bla bla bla), you know the drill. However, I decided to take it seriously about 2 months ago before the exam date and started putting in some constant hours.
After taking the practice test on ACloudGuru, I realised I had two main problem areas to improve. Inability to concentrate for 3 hours straight and lack of technical knowledge for quite a lot of services that will be covered in the exam. I will break down how I tackled these two problems. I also came up with a system to keep track of time during the exam and save time when reviewing questions (it’s based on something I read somewhere, can’t remember, but thanks to that person).
Inability to concentrate:
You can bark at me all day long and I will start day dreaming before you have opened your mouth. If the text doesn’t read like a story, I struggle to remember what I read.
The Solutions Architect questions do not really read like a story. There is a lot of text to go through in 2 mins (You need to aim for 2 minutes per question, I am sure you know it by now). I tried learning speed reading (failed due to lack of practice).
Train your brain
- I needed to train my brain on how to dissect the question quickly and know what to look for. How to eliminate wrong answers quickly. I took the AWS Solutions Architect Professional — Exam Readiness course which gave me a good starting point (in fact I cruised through this course again a week before the exam to validate my skills).
- Avoid reading common text by scanning answers vertically. Usually the first sentence is similar.
Start writing things down
- Go old school, grab pen and paper and start writing things down. When you are taking practice tests, write down “what the question is asking for” (eg: Does codepipeline support OpsWorks? How does this option affect price?). It forced my brain to look for keywords (cost effective, highly available etc).
- Write down what confused you about the answers, go back and research.
Plan your study sessions
- Plan your study sessions a day before, mark it in your calendar. Review your calendar every morning. This prepares you to study before you start your session.
- Study at the same time everyday. Helps to form a habit which makes it easy to stick to your routine.
Read out loud
- If you are a slow reader like me or get distracted easily while reading, try reading out loud for a couple of study sessions, I realised I was able to go through a lot of text quickly while retaining a lot more information than reading silently.
- Reading out loud exposed me to the information twice in one go. Once while I read it and then again when I heard myself say it.
Go to Part — 2.
