Some frequently asked questions about the AWS certifications
While preparing for certifications, you may have several questions, like where to start and how to finish. The following sections will list frequently asked questions that often come to mind.
How long will it take to get certified?
A question frequently asked is how many months you should study for before sitting down for the exam. Look at that in terms of hours instead of months.
As you can imagine, you will be able to take the exam a lot sooner if you study for 2 hours every day instead of only studying for 1 hour a week. If you decide to take some AWS-sponsored intensive full-day or multi-day training, that may go a long way toward shortening the cycle.
One way to optimize your time is instead of watching videos, you can listen to them in the car or while on the train going into the city. Even though watching them is much more beneficial, you can still embed key concepts while listening to them, and that time would have been dead time anyway.
You don’t want to space out the time between study sessions too much. If you do that, you may find yourself in a situation where you start forgetting what you have learned. The number of hours it will take you will also depend on your previous experience. If you are working with AWS for your day job, that will shorten the number of hours needed to complete your studies.
The following subsections will give you an idea of the amount of time you should spend preparing for each exam.
The Cloud Practitioner certification
Preparing for this certification typically takes between 15 and 25 hours. Achieving this credential will help you develop skills and acquire critical knowledge related to implementing cloud initiatives. By earning the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification, you can demonstrate your fluency with the cloud and validate your foundational knowledge of AWS.
Associate-level certifications
If you don’t have previous AWS experience, plan to spend between 70 and 100 hours preparing. Also, keep in mind that there is considerable overlap between the other certifications once you pass one of the Associate certifications. It will not take another 70 to 100 hours to obtain the second and third certifications. As mentioned in this chapter, it is highly recommended to take the two other Associate-level certifications soon after passing the first one.
Expect to spend another 20 to 40 hours studying for the two remaining certifications if you don’t wait too long to take them after passing the first one.
Professional-level certifications
There is quite a leap between the Associate-level certifications and the Professional-level certifications. The domain coverage will be similar, but you will need to know how to use the AWS services covered in much more depth, and the questions will certainly be harder. Assuming you took at least one of the Associate-level certifications, expect to spend another 70 to 100 hours watching videos, reading, and taking practice tests to pass this exam.
AWS removed the requirement of having to take the Associate-level certifications before being able to sit for the Professional-level certifications. However, it is still probably a good idea to take at least some Associate exams before taking the Professional-level exams.
As is the case with the Associate-level exams, once you pass one of the Professional-level exams, it should take much less study time to prepare for another Professional exam as long as you don’t wait too long to take the second exam and forget everything.
Specialty certifications
I am lumping all the Specialty certifications under one subheading, but there is significant variability in the difficulty level between all the Specialty certifications. If you have a background in networking, you will be more comfortable with the Advanced Networking certification than with the Data Science certification.
When it comes to these certifications, you may be better off focusing on your area of expertise unless you are collecting all certifications. For example, if you are a data scientist, the Machine Learning – Specialty certification and Analytics certification may be your best bet.
Depending on your experience, expect to spend about these amounts of time:
- Security – Specialty – 40 to 60 hours
- SAP – Specialty – 40 to 60 hours
- Machine Learning – Specialty – 50 to 70 hours
- Data Analytics – Specialty– 40 to 60 hours
- Database – Specialty – 30 to 50 hours
- Advanced Networking – Specialty – 50 to 70 hours
How to request additional exam time
An additional 30 minutes can make a lot of difference between passing and failing exams, especially when sitting for more challenging exams such as AWS Professional and Specialty certifications. An essential tip for non-native English speakers is that you can request an extra 30 minutes to complete the exam. Take the following steps to get an additional 30 minutes:
- Click on the home page of your CertMetrics account: https://www.certmetrics.com/amazon/
- On the right, click the Request Exam Accommodations button
Figure 2.13: Request Exam Accommodations button
- Click the Request Accommodation button
- Select ESL +30 Minutes from the accommodation dropdown
- Click Create and you will see the following approval request available under the Exam Registration tab
Figure 2.14: Exam Registration tab
Make sure to apply for the accommodation before scheduling your exam as it won’t be applicable to already scheduled exams. It’s a one-time activity and applies to all future exam registrations after getting approval.
What are some last-minute tips for the day of the exam?
AWS offers two exam modes: remote and on-site at an AWS authorized exam center. When taking an AWS certification exam at a testing center, the on-site staff will help with check-in, exam access on test center computers, and will answer any questions. On the other hand, with online exam proctoring, you can take the same exam with the same allotted time as you would in a testing center, but on your own computer. During the exam, a proctor will remotely monitor your progress.
A decent half marathon time is about 90 minutes, which is how long you get to take the Associate-level exams, and a good marathon time is about 3 hours, which is how long you get to take the Professional-level exams.
Keeping focus for that amount of time is not easy. For that reason, you should be well rested when you take the exam. It is highly recommended to take the exam on a day when you don’t have too many other responsibilities; I would not take it after working a full day. You will be too burned out.
Make sure you have a light meal before the exam – enough so that you are not hungry during the test and feel energetic, but not so much that you feel sleepy from digesting all that food.
Just as you wouldn’t want to get out of the gate too fast or too slow in a race, keep pace yourself during the exam. You also don’t want to be beholden to the clock, checking it constantly. The clock will always appear in the top-right part of the exam, but you want to avoid looking at it most of the time. I recommend writing down on the three sheets you will receive where you should be after every 20 questions and checking the clock against these numbers only when you have answered 20 questions. This way, you will be able to adjust if you are going too fast or too slow, but you will not spend excessive time watching the clock.
The above is just a recommendation, however; everyone has their own strategy which you can build when practicing the exam. Apply whatever strategy best fits your style. Let’s now summarize what we have learned in this chapter.