How I obtained All AWS Associate Level Certificates in Two Weeks

5 min readMar 2, 2021

Introduction

Hi, my name is Nicolas El Khoury, and between 9/2/2021 and 25/2/2021, I was able to pass all the associate level exams, while maintaining a full time job, and a hectic personal life. I tried to think of many catchy and trendy introductions about AWS Certificates, along with their advantages and whatnot. However, I noticed that the internet is filled with articles that contain excellent explanations. Therefore, in this article, I will omit this part, and cut straight to sharing my personal experience, along with some tips and tricks to better prepare for your associate level exam, and increase the chances of passing it with minimal training.

Background Information

My professional experience that I obtained in the past years played a major role in decreasing the complexity of the exam material, and the time required to prepare for each exam. As a matter of fact, I have around 5 years of experience in providing DevOps Solutions, Cloud Infrastructure Solutions (On AWS mainly), and Software Architecture using the Microservices approach. I brief, I am experienced in providing enterprise-grade software, infrastructure, and automation solutions for Web based applications. Visit my website for more information about my career history.

That being said, in summary, I did not face much experience in studying for the exams, or even in passing them.

The exams

Over the course of 2 weeks, I managed to prepare and pass all three AWS Associate level Certificates:

While preparing for the exams, I solely resorted to preparation material courses designed by Neal Davis. Moreover, each exam required on average 6–7 hours of preparation.

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator — Associate (SOA)

This was the first exam I took. Needless to say, I was a little bit anxious, and did not know what to expect. I bought two courses from Udemy: [NEW] AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate 2021 and the corresponding practice exams. Not knowing how to prepare, I started by watching every episode from the course (On a speed of x1.75). Surprisingly, I enjoyed the course very much. Even though I am quite experienced in most of the course’s content (i.e., VPC, EC2, ASG, S3, RDS, etc), I learned a lot from the course, due to the Neal’s fun and interactive approach, which not only focuses on theories and information, but also on interesting hands on labs that further strengthen the topic being studied.

I finished the course in about 5 hours, and directly solved the practice exam associated with the course. I was able to pass the exam easily, thus boosting my confidence. Afterwards, I solved two other practice exams, which I also passed easily. That’s when I decided that I was ready to take on the exam. I registered to the exam through the AWS Training Portal, and passed it with a score of 926 / 1000.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate (SAA)

After finishing the first exam, I became hesitant as to whether I should stop here or continue with the certificates. Before deciding, I went on and purchased Neal’s Udemy course along with its practice exams. Honestly, I felt lazy, especially after learning that the course is much longer and contains a lot of information, far more than the AWS SysOps exam. Moreover, the course content was quite similar. However, Neal had introduced a wonderful feature in his exams: The exam cram. At the end of every section, there exist one or two videos usually containing all the important information that must be kept in mind for the exam. Therefore, I skipped the whole course content and only focused on the exam crams, which I was finished in less than two hours. Finally, I solved 3 exams, which I was able to pass easily, before passing the exam on February 19th with a score of 825 / 1000 (Even though my score was relatively low, I can easily say that this exam was not more difficult than the AWS SysOps Associate exam):

AWS Certified Developer — Associate (DVA)

Having passed two exams in 10 days, I was determined to prepare and achieve the third and final associate level AWS certificate. In this regard, again, I purchased Neal’s Udemy course along with its practice exams. Unfortunately, The AWS Certified Developer course content is quite different than the other two exams. As a matter of fact, this exam focuses a lot on AWS Services related to development (i.e., Amazon DynamoDB, AWS SQS, AWS Cognito, etc). Evidently, I am not experienced with such services. I skimmed through the exam crams quickly, and directly jumped into solving the practice exams, which I successfully failed miserably. It was then when I noticed that unless I familiarize myself very well with these AWS services, I will never be able to pass the exam. Therefore, I researched and read a lot about every AWS service that I felt uncomfortable with, and I reviewed the explanation of every question that I failed to answer correctly. After around 12 hours of preparation, I felt ready for the exam, which I took and passed with a score of 987 / 1000.

Conclusion (And tips)

In brief, the AWS exams are not easy, but also not impossible. It is important to understand very well the concepts of every service and/or concept covered in the exam, since most of the exam questions are scenario based. Below is a set of tips to consider when preparing for AWS exams:

Have a thorough understanding, and preferably hands on experience on every AWS service covered.
Create an AWS account and play around with the AWS free tier. The AWS console is very amusing and easy to navigate, despite the complexity of the platform.
Research the basic concepts behind the AWS services. For instance, if you’re learning about AWS ELBs, a good approach would be to understand what load balancers are, and how they operate. This will give you a great insight on why AWS services are built and are operated and used.
Preferably, make sure to have a few years of professional experience in using AWS, for this alone is enough to help you pass the exams easily.
There are plenty of tailored online courses (and cheap). I highly recommend purchasing such courses, rather than depending on your own research.
Solve practice exams as much as possible. Solving these exams will give you more insight on the type of questions asked, and will always teach you information that you might have missed from your exam preparations.
Do not be afraid of the exam. I understand that some people don’t perform well under exam pressure. However, remember that this is only a certificate and not a graduation project.