AWS Developer Associate Exam

Preparation Time: 3-4 Weeks

My preparation for the AWS Developer Associate exam spanned over three, almost 4 weeks. Below are all the resources I used to study for the exam.

Resources Utilized

Stephane Maarek’s Udemy Course

This course proved to be an invaluable resource, providing an in-depth exploration of all the topics relevant to the exam. Stephane’s thorough explanations and hands-on practice sessions were instrumental in solidifying my understanding of AWS services. It provides a nice high-level understanding of all the relevant concepts. For me personally, I didn’t feel that just doing this course was enough. It’s definitely a good starter/base if you are preparing for the exam, but don’t completely rely on it.

Tips:

• The course is lengthy. 34 hours, and towards the end I felt like I was just dragging myself to complete it. Don’t make the same mistake that I did, take more time if you can afford to.
• Midway, I stopped doing the hands-on exercises and just watched Stephane do it. Don’t do this. Many times questions on the exams are about small parameters/values you can/cannot change from the console and it helps if you have fiddled around with the console.

Price: 8-9$ in India. (Might vary depending on which country your Udemy account is registered in).

Tutorial Dojo Practice Exams

If not for these exams, I would have not cleared the exam with the ease with which I could. The explanations provided for each of the wrong answers were well put and helped me clear my concepts. They helped me understand why the option I thought was the right answer, due to some of the nuances, was the wrong answer.

Price: 12$ (with 1$ discount) for 6 timed mode quizzes, 6 review modes, 1 final test, and flashcards to revise concepts.

Digital Cloud Training Cheatsheets

These cheatsheets by Neal Davis are a knowledge powerhouse. I would recommend going through this once or twice before the exam. These helped me revise concepts, especially the service limits and quotas. Also, the topics in the cheatsheets are just the ones you need to study for this specific exam so it’s not like you are going through documentation of an entire AWS service.

Price: Free of Cost!

Exam topics Question dump

This resource proved to be an invaluable resource. I came to know about these on the morning of the exam, and I wished I’d known about them sooner. This is a free resource and some of the questions from these mirrored the questions I saw on the actual exam.

Tip: Don’t follow the answer mentioned in their questions, follow the community-voted answer.

Final Remarks

I took the exam in the 11-1 pm slot, and I had my result in 4-5 hours, though the official site tells you to wait 5 business days. I scored 856/1000 and was pretty stoked about it. Due to the ongoing job hunt and hundreds of rejection emails, this was a welcome ‘Congrats’ email. I’m motivated to now take on the AWS SysOps Administrator Associate exam! You can reach out to me using my contact options on the site if you have any questions or need any help. Cheers!