How I got 937 marks in the AWS Certified Developer Associate exam?

Amazon Web Service is undoubtedly one of the leading cloud service providers. AWS offers several certifications in which AWS Certified Developer is one of those. I recently completed this exam and scored 937 out of 1000. This article is all about what that exam is all about and how to clear it.

  • Prerequisites
  • Why should you write this exam
  • About the exam
  • How to register
  • How to prepare
  • Tips and tricks
  • My experience
  • Additional resources
  • Conclusion

Prerequisites

To be honest, you don’t really need any experience to apply for this exam. But AWS recommends one or more years of experience in any high-level programming language. If you are a person with zero experience then don’t worry. I know people who have cleared this exam by absolutely beginning from scratch. I will tell you exactly how I prepared for this exam. If you are completely new to AWS refer to this page to understand what is AWS and what problem do they solve?

Why should you write this exam

If you are a developer or aiming to become a developer then this certification is going to boost your portfolio. Clearing this certification will give you a fair idea on how the AWS environment works and if you have hands-on experience when preparing, then you are naturally going to feel confident. And the part that I loved about clearing this certification is, I was able to add the AWS certified Developer associate logo (shown below) on my resume. This is going to make your resume look unique.

About the exam

  • You will be asked 65 questions either multiple choice or multiple responses where you need to get 47 questions (72%) right. Though this stat is not given on the documentation, many resources that I studied indicated it. 
  • You will be given 130 mins ( 2 hours and 10 mins) and if English is not your native language then you can apply for additional 30 mins during the time of registration. 
  • This certification cost $150 USD. 
  • You can either take this test from your home or at a test center (recommended). 
  • Language available in English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese
  • Questions are basically divided into 5 domains. They are,
    • Deployment (22%)
    • Security (26%)
    • Development with AWS Services (30%)
    • Refactoring (10%)
    • Monitoring and Troubleshooting (12%)
  • You will get the result immediately after you finish the exam.
  • For more details refer to the official AWS page.

How to register

Visit the AWS training page, log in using your Amazon account, and register for the exam. You can now take all the exams from home and you just need to select PSI or Pearson VUE while scheduling the exam. Note that you can apply even before the day you plan. So prepare and be confident enough and then apply and write immediately.

How to prepare

There is no substitute for hard work. Being an AWS developer for 2 years, I still found the certification hard during the initial stage. That’s because I have not worked on many services that AWS offered. Learning new services will be easy but answering questions related to them is the troublesome part. 

  • An AWS account (it has a free tier of 1 year)
  • Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate (UDEMY)- teaches you almost every concept for the exam
  • AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam Questions (SKILLCERTPRO) – Useful exam practice tests that contain questions similar to an actual exam. 

Tips and tricks

  • Don’t completely get lost in the tutorial. Plan time for learning and practicing the services.
  • If you are not sure on what services to begin with and how much time to spend on each service then refer to the plan which I followed. (Note: The time I specified does not include hands-on)
  • Once you have started to complete the tutorial with some hands-on sessions you may feel it easy. But you are going to start your preparation now only. 
  • WRITE A MINIMUM OF 15 TEST BEFORE THE EXAM (preferably skillcertpro since it has some tough questions). The idea behind writing this many tests is, you will be able to pick the keywords as soon as you understand the pattern of the question.
  • Make sure you consistently score more than 80% before taking up the exam. If so, then immediately apply for the exam and write the exam.
  • The following is the spreadsheet that I used for analyzing myself before writing the exam.

My experience

I believe that the reason I cleared the exam is because I have written so many test exams and the main exam was just another exam. During the exam, when I saw the first 3 questions I was completely clueless. I even thought for a second whether I sat for any other exam. But I knew that once I got one question right, then I would gain momentum. That’s what actually happened. I felt the exam was very easy. 

Preparation time

1 to 2 month if you have AWS experience

2 to 3 months if you don’t have any AWS experience

Additional resources

Conclusion

All our data are headed towards the cloud. So it is not too late to get this certificate and land your dream job. GOOD LUCK!!

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