So you want to take the AWS SA Associate exam?
There’s a few resources I would recommend for this journey. Depending on the depth at which you want to understand the material, you can follow one of two paths:
1. I just want to pass the exam…
Sure, this is certainly a valid approach depending on your current experience and role. I wouldn’t recommend this if you aren’t yet working in the cloud and don’t feel comfortable discussing cloud technologies and services.
If you are in the industry, or just don’t think it will be relevant for any interviews, then this might be the path for you!
Let’s start with course material.
If you’re like me, this is where you’re going to spend most of your time. Courses help you build the foundational knowledge required to understand a variety of topics and wrap your head around all content presented in the exam as a whole.
For this, I would recommend the following course: Stephane Maarek’s Course on Udemy
While I haven’t taken this course myself (I went route #2), I’ve seen many a colleague and peer pass the exam using this course content. It’s at a great price from Udemy and will stay connected to your account. I’ve had some experiences in the past where I lost content I bought from the teacher’s sites directly – looking at you Neal Davis.
If you buy it from Udemy, wait for a discount. They run these crazy “specials” constantly, and intermittently you will find an insane $100 price for the course – don’t pay it. They have a highly variable price structure.
How do I practice for the exam?
I’ll speak more about this in my SA Pro blog, but there’s a few different vendors for exams I like. In the case of the SA Associate, I found Jon Bonso the best and, most importantly, most accurate exams. There’s plenty of exams out there which are unrealistic. Especially if you are big on just learning the exam, you’ll want to avoid these.
My study plan is as follows:
- Complete all portions of the course you don’t know anything about. Take notes, but typed notes are fine.
- Practice Exams:
- Take one. Worse than 50%, back to the course (this hasn’t happened to me if I complete the course).
- Better than 50%? Review each question in detail and understand all of the wrong answers, as well as the correct one. Take notes on this with pen and paper. Then take the next exam and do the same until you’ve done them all. You should be good by the time you’ve taken every exam multiple times, and this will likely cover most questions you’ll face in the real exam.
- If you’re really struggling, maybe evaluate how focused you were on course content.
I recommend keeping your exam scores and questions missed in an excel sheet. Actually, I’ll include the template here:
You can fill the boxes with nothing (correct), an “x” (wrong), or an asterisk “*”, indicating you were unsure (yellow). I would highly recommend going through the answers and explanations for the unsure ones as well, as those might stump you on the test. I built this when I took the SA Pro, and the exam lengths will vary or may have changed, so feel free to shorten or lengthen as needed in your own copy.
Now, for those who have some interest in the content (forced or not)…
2. I need to “talk the talk”.
So you need to actually understand the content? Great. Not that the courses above can’t do that for you, but I would argue that no-one teaches this way better than the man himself: Adrian Cantrill
His courses are in-depth with demos, projects, and explanations of the underlying fundamentals. I can’t tell you how confused I was jumping into cloud without understanding networking, security, or operating system fundamentals. I wish I would’ve discovered Adrian Cantrill courses sooner.
His courses will take longer, but you will leave the course an expert. He offers great bundle discounts and if you ever decide to upgrade to a bundle in the future, he’s made it super easy to claim those discounts. I can’t say enough positive about his content.
My favorite part? He creates content that has shared knowledge across all his courses. If you’ve taken one of his courses, no need to take chapters which are duplicative to what you’ve already learned. This has saved me so much time going through the rest of his courses. Due to this I actually have the “All the Things” bundle, which includes all his content. I got a great discount for it and my role necessitates that I will eventually have all of these certs, so it made sense for me. I recommend starting with at least the basics.
How do I practice for the exam?
I would recommend the same approach as above. There’s some practice exams in the Cantrill content as well, but Jon Bonso will still do you well. Please try the Google Sheets Template and let me know if this has been helpful in your studies.
What now?
Good luck in your studies! The earlier you get started, the easier. I promise the more you work with cloud the more it will make sense and the easier these exams will get. After a year of being a support engineer the SA Pro felt miles easier than the SA Associate was when I didn’t have any experience.
I hope you find the resources valuable and reach out if you need anything at all!
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