My experience with AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification
Tags: aws, saa, certification, awscommunitybuilders
Published: 2022-12-15 14:02:57

---
title: My experience with AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification
published: true
description: 
tags: aws, saa, certification, awscommunitybuilders
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t472c3b1w4ojhmcov9ut.png
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# published_at: 2022-12-13 11:32 +0000
---
As my post's title suggests, I have recently cleared my AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certification. I will be sharing the resources I used as part of my preparation, so that you don't have to. 

## Preparation Strategy
If you are working on AWS and have good hands-on experience(preferably more than 1 year), then you will not feel completely alienated. For the rest of folks like me, it may feel a bit overwhelming at first. Reason for it is simple, as this is a solutions architect certification, it covers a lot of service offerings of AWS. I will recommend to keep following a consistent study routine and use the resources shared in this post.  

## Video Course
I started my preparation from certification ready books, but soon realized that its better to use a video course. Reason being, the **hands-on** aspect of your preparation will not be covered with books. I studied from Udemy course [AWS-Certified Solutions Architect Associate](https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c03/) by [Stephane Maarek](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanemaarek/) which was sufficient for my overall preparation. You can very well go for other courses, but if you are specifically preparing for SAA C03 exam, this course covers all the relevant services with sufficient details. 

## Practice Exams
Getting familiar with actual scenarios in which exam validates you, is also very important. I actually started doing practice exams after I skimmed through the video course once. But while doing practice tests, I revisited the required sections of the course. I am sharing details of the practice exams which I used and found them sufficient for exam preparation. After doing these practice tests, I got more familiar with the services, their pros/cons and use cases that best suite them. And that is the overall expectation of this certification, that you can analyze the business requirement and suggest best possible combination of services for that requirement.
1. [Practice Exams](https://www.udemy.com/course/practice-exams-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/) by [Stephane Maarek](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanemaarek/) were the first I attempted. It contains 6 practice tests which is around 400 questions. These questions are good and so are the answers and explanations shared. 
2. [Practice Exams](https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-practice-tests-k/) by [Neal Davis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nealkdavis/) is another very good quality course which I found very useful. Neal also shares some cheat sheets on his website(shared within the answers/review section) which are quite handy.

## Notes
I started creating my own personal notes initially. I personally find it useful for better understanding. But soon enough, I had around 300 pages of information which I knew would be very difficult to review before the exam. Now, making flash cards out of them would have been a huge task. Then google came to the rescue and I came across [this website](https://notes.arkalim.org/notes/aws%20solutions%20architect%20associate/aws%20solutions%20architect%20associate%20(saa-c02)/) and looked no further. Author [Abdur Rahman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdurrahmankalim/) had put so much effort in creating concise, formatted notes for AWS SAA C02 exam preparation. 

## Wrapping Up
Above listed resources really helped me in my exam preparation. My [certificate](https://www.credly.com/badges/4ba2cf5b-cdbb-4a6c-b5a6-af84ac264ef6/public_url) is testimony to that. In case you have any other related questions, do share your queries/comments. Happy Learning!!