Passed SAP – some comments

[stoneybridge]

Hi all. I just wanted to share some feedback based on the other threads on this forum which were questioning both the real exam and how relevant the dojo practice exam content is

For context: I have worked with AWS daily for 6 years and 3 years ago I passed all the associate exams. It was time to renew the architecture exam so I decided to level up and tackle the SAP exam. I passed first time yesterday with 937.

To prepare I used Stephane Maareks short Udemy course, dojo practice exams, and Whizlabs practice exams. I was scoring 85% +/-5% on all the practice exams.

In my view the dojo exams are a fair reflection of the real exam. The question length and quality in dojo is broadly similar, but not the same as, the majority of questions in my exam yesterday.

There were a few questions in the real exam that were exceptionally long and complex and arguably felt more challenging than what I can recall experiencing in dojo. Similarly with the content – my exam threw in quite a heavy weighting of ECS and Fargate questions which I didn’t encounter in any of my practice exams. But I think the content you get on the day is really down to luck.

Overall I am happy that I chose dojo as part of my prep strategy. I also preferred dojo to Whizlabs as the English and grammar was stronger. Whizlabs was useful too for variety – repeating the same question bank on a regular basis leads to lazy memory based answers.

The exam itself is a gruelling slog and you should definitely be prepared for a battle of endurance. I found fatigue was a problem from question 60 onwards and I had to give my self a mental slap to keep focussed.

I got off to a poor start and was a bit rattled having burnt 30 mins on the first 6 questions with 3 of them marked for review. But I then got a run of questions that were much more in my comfort zone and I managed to get back on track. I got to question 75 with 20 mins to spare and used about 10 mins to revisit the 10’ish questions I had marked for review. Interestingly I did not change a single answer on the flagged questions.

So I guess my advice would be: prepare and use the practice exams wisely and not exhaustively, stay composed, stay focussed, and try and make a best attempt (even a guess) at every question before flagging and moving on – you probably won’t change your mind later.

Good luck.

[TutorialsDojo-Support]

Hi Stoneybridge! Congratulations and thank you for sharing some insights about the actual exam. We are honored to have been part of your AWS journey and we’re happy to know that we prepared you well for the exam. All the best on your future certification tests! 🙂