Passing the AWS developer certificate course

Context

My company (Appian) provides a generous offering of ~$7,000 AUD per year for self-study. The catch though is you have to pass in order to receive the full subsidy.

For a while now, I've been eyeing for this certification, finally comited and booked the exam with 2 months to study for it.

Did the studying outside of work (this involved nights and weekends).

Study plan

Lectures

Started to watch Stephanie Maarek's Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate 2021 - NEW!

For the first few weeks, I watched the lectures and did the follow along.

The pace though was a bit slow so by week 4 / half way, I only finished around 30% of the course content.

To speed things up, I skipped the follow along and watch the videos on 2x speed (sometimes 3x with the javascript)

document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 3.0

Did the above method for 3 weeks. With 1 week left, and around 80% done. I took 3 days of work off and watched the rest of it with 2 days to spare.

Practice Papers

On the last 2 days, I did 8 practice papers from Stephanie and Neal's practice papers on Udemy (see below).

The practice paper revision process was:

Speed run the practice paper and see what area I was weak on.
Do some revision (usually reviewing the lecture slides and these github notes)
Practice the same test again to make sure I remember the mistakes and move on to the next test. Since the above process was to make sure I understand my content, I sped through each practice paper (completing them on average in 30 minutes - it's either I knew the answer or I don't).

Near the end though, because of the time constraint, I just practice the paper without doing the revision. At this point I felt like I have a decent chance of passing the exam

Score on each practice exam (I didn't do it in this order, rather a mix of both courses but generally starting from Practice Test 1 to 5)

"Practice Exams | AWS Certified Developer" by Stephanie Maarek

Practice Test	Attempt	Reattempt
Practice 1	66%	95%
Practice 2	70%	93%
Practice 3	70%	90%
Practice 4	80%	89%
Practice 5	81%	95%

"AWS Certified Developer Associate Practice Exam" By Neal Davis

Practice Test	Attempt	Reattempt
Practice 1	69%	-
Practice 2	80%	92%
Practice 3	73%	-
Practice 4	81%	-

Exam

Booked in on-line with PSI, process was painless / pretty easy.

Went to the in-person exam at Bella Vista , couldn't find parking though so glad I went in 4 hours early (Parked at Mcdonalds nearby and did some more practice papers before the test).

The actual exam process was a computer and all the questions on a slide (UI was outdated and a bit laggy).

Finished the exam in an hour. ## Results

I passed the AWS developer associate exam with 905/1000.

Got Appian to re-imburse the amount in full 😁.

Hope it helps! Feel free to ping me on twitter (@kndwindev) if you have any questions!