How I passed AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C02) in just one month
Hi. I’m Yutaro and I’m a software engineer at GAOGAO.
Although I didn’t really have AWS background, I could pass the SAA-C02 exam so I’d like to share my story of how I went as a non-native English speaker.
TL;DR
- AWS experience is a nice-to-have to pass
- Take quizzes, take notes on areas or services you got wrong, review them in Udemy lectures or Google them, and repeat this steps until you feel confident at them
- Just set your test date right now, put yourself in a situation where you must study for it, never change the test date, and go for it, in one month.
- Learn with somebody else, rather than alone
How we did it
Me and some of my colleagues decided to take AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate in 6 months, so we had been learning AWS basics using this Udemy course (Japanese).
https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-associate/
We all bought this course. Since all of us were Japanese natives, this course was pretty good because it has very detailed hands on and explanations of each AWS services which are likely to be on exams.
In addition to those hands-ons, it comes with a few practice exams which are composed of 65 questions, same as the actual exam.
We had a 1 hour study group every other week from February, 2021 to September. After we went through all the video lectures on Udemy, we just focused on solving quizzes attached to the course.
I tried to solve it over and over again until I could constantly take 90%+.
I took one of the 3 test exams everyday before one week from the test date, and just 2 or 3 days before, I could always answer these questions more than 90% right, but not 100%. Every time I had some confusions to some questions so I did a thorough review to the questions I got wrong.
…in Japanese.
On the test day, my confidence to passing this exam turned into a nightmare because I realized that I had applied to the English version of SAA-C02, which wasn’t intentional.
If you are thinking just to pass this exam, it is always wise to take it in your native language, Japanese in my case, but it was too late.
I literally saw no language switch button, which are shown if you are taking “ normal version”, so I was in a little panic at first, but little by little, I got calm down at around 10th problem or so.
I was so upset that I marked every first 10 problems as “mark to review”.
I spent almost the entire 130 mins, but I could finish it.
I prayed.
Until I saw in the result screen the letter “PASS”.
Yes, even if you learn all the stuff in Japanese, or your native language, you could still pass it in English version.
What AWS is asking you to understand is unchangeable through any languages.
So, what I wanted to share is that taking AWS exams in English is challenging but also make you feel confident.
It was also good that I had passionate colleagues who are eager to learn things, which kept me learning instead of stopping it and defeat the temptation of setting the exam date back later.
This was a good challenge to me and made me feel taking SAP-C01 next year, so I started to learning towards this goal.
https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-professional/
Let’s keep going 🏃♂️
