{"id":724,"date":"2020-11-01T07:05:55","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T07:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zineausa.com\/blog\/?p=724"},"modified":"2020-11-02T04:05:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T04:05:57","slug":"how-i-self-studied-and-passed-the-aws-certified-solutions-architect-professional-exam-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zineausa.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/how-i-self-studied-and-passed-the-aws-certified-solutions-architect-professional-exam-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Self Studied and Passed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional Exam 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog post will be about how I studied for and passed the AWS SAP-C01 exam in two months (with a 890\/1000 in October 2020, with 750 needed to pass), and some tips and tricks along with some resources I used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Again, I signed up for an exam about two months in advance. Make sure you use that 50% off voucher if you’ve passed one of the AWS exams already, it should be available at certmetrics.com<\/a>. These exams fill up quick and the good slots about a month out were already taken. They let you take the exams at home which is cool, due to COVID I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My primary two sources were from Udemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CSAP 2020 Course – Stephane Maarek<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First one was this course: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I used Stepahne’s course to pass the AWS CSA-A so I figured it was a solid choice to study for the professional level one as well. Note his course didn’t come with any practice exams other than a few practice questions at the end of every section, and he explained the ones AWS gave out for free pretty well too. Overall the course was solid and definitely built on top of the knowledge I had gained to pass the CSA-A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t think the CSA-A is a requirement to take the CSA-P per AWS standards, but I would highly recommend it since it’s the same content but easier, and it can serve as a checkpoint for you. I have about 3 years of AWS experience but it had been limited in a few pretty basic things like EC2, VPC, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, for this course, I scheduled about one section per day, which is approximately an hour long. I finished the course in less than a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practice Exam – Zeal Vora – AVOID<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Oh man. I tried one of the two the practice exam in this course cause it came free for my company. HIGHLY DO NOT RECCOMMEND. I don’t know how it got a 4.3 rating, but it was 3.5 last I checked I think. The practice tests were full of typos, and most of them didn’t even give explanations. I almost quit studying at this point but then I found the awesome practice exams below from Jon..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practice Exams – Jon Bonso<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Next I took this course from Udemy as well: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jon took a lot of time to write good practice exams and actually took the time to respond when I thought something looked wrong and commented about it. I really respect what he’s done and pretty sure these practice exams were half of the reason I passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He gives 4 sets of practice tests with 75 questions each, which is AWESOME. In my opinion they were pretty on point, it simulated the actual exam pretty well and the question length\/details were pretty similar as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took all 4 and reviewed each question in detail as to why I got it wrong and learned from each failure. I was getting about 80% by the end of the 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TutorialsDojo Exam Simulator<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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When I bought the Jon practice exams it came with this as well.. I tried it, it was cool cause it gave instant feedback but kind of redundant since it used the same pool of questions from the 4 practice exams, so I got halfway through the first 30 questions and stopped cause I wasn’t learning anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certmetrics “Free” Practice Exam SAP-P01<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finally, about two days before the exam I decided to take the “free” practice exam SAP-P01 that AWS gives out once you pass one of their exams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I learned a few things I should probably review.. but I submit it thinking I’d get the results right away. The problem is I never got the results, nor the answers. Glad I didn’t actually pay for this $20 or $40 practice exam. It was 20 questions long and you had to complete it in the hour given, or else. Would not recommend, but I guess kind of valuable if you want to google the answers afterwards or while taking it to make sure you got it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last thing I did before the exam is review the questions I got wrong while practicing for the AWS CSA-A exam, that list is here <\/a>if you need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Exam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Finally.. how was the exam you ask? Any tips? Well.. I was given 180 minutes to finish 75 questions, which was approximately 2.5 minutes a question. I took about 165 minutes and had 15 mins at the end to memorize what I potentially needed to study if I had failed. I’m not sure if I was slower than usual, but I have never cut it this close to the time limit on an exam before, other than on the OSCP. I’m a pretty fast reader but his exam had A LOT of material to go through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I changed proctors like 3 times and they kept asking me to stop doing things like covering my mouth with my shirt, or stop looking away from the screen. I learned from last time not to talk to myself during the exam, even though I’m alone at home but the constant chat boxes popping up was definitely distracting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, some tips.. If these are against exam policy please contact me via the contact us form, or leave a comment below and I’ll remove.. but in general here are some things that the practice exams didn’t really prepare me for:<\/p>\n\n\n\n