Exam preparation tips for AWS-C03

Certifications play a vital role in our careers as a technical person. There are plenty of technical certifications available and you can choose as per your career aspirations and area of interests.

For past many years I am into the cloud space and working on AWS and I have recently got re-certified on AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate.

I am writing this blog to help many aspirants who wants to appear for the same.

My journey with AWS started in around 2018 and I started learning and understanding AWS from you-tube videos and blogs. I got my interests developed in this space and started learning more. I took couple of courses on the Pluralsight to develop detail level understanding on different AWS services like AWS VPC, EC2, routing, subnets and other basic building blocks.

Then took an Udemy course by A Cloud Guru for AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate along with few practice tests. These courses costs 400–500 INR each but this gives you nice understanding on most of the use cases being asked in the actual Exam.

I took the exam after preparing for around a month and I passed it with nice score.

Now I appeared again for the same exam in 2023 and passed the same but the scenario has been changed drastically. This is because AWS updates/adds many services each year and they keep updating the exams also to keep it relevant.

The major thing to note here between old exam and the new exam are —

1. old exams used to have many questions which has options as true/false where as exams in 2023 does not have any such questions
2. in old exams many questions had direct answers that you can get right if you have only basic understanding on AWS concepts. Where as in new exam, you need to have a good and detailed level understanding on most of the services covered in the course.
3. in old exam, it was OK if you do not have much hands-on. You can not say so on the current exam. I would recommend to have good hand-on with AWS console with real use cases.

How to prepare for the Exam

1. Take course from Udemy on AWS-C03(latest exam code) by Neal Devis or Stephan Marek. I would say both are equally good.
2. Read through the FAQs for major services
3. Read through the AWS white papers
4. Good hands-on on the AWS console
5. AWS Architecting course on AWS Skill Builder portal. This one is really cool and AWS as promoting this platform a lot.
6. Go through the practice tests available in these courses. Also you can purchase other courses on practice tests which gives you good amount of understanding on scenario based questions that you can be tested in the exam (though you can not expect same questions in the exam).

I am pretty sure if you do prepare well with this, there are bright chances of your passing the exam (though I have seen cases where people not passing the actual exams even if they are good on above things😢 ).

Finally, before booking your exam keep looking for discount offers😍 on AWS websites. This coupons really gives nice discounts up-to 50%.

Note: Bare in mind that if you are planning for appearing in the exam via Pearson Center, you have to book your slot at-least 24 hour prior to the exam.
I was not aware of this and so I had to book online proctor based exam which you can appear from home. But I would strongly recommend to go to center for exam as the proctor exam is not a good experience at all 😢.

Please comment your experiences here so that can help others prepare for the same.

Wish you all happy learning!!