How to pass AWS Certified Developer Associate with minimal Effort
Ever since I passed my AWS Developer Associate Exam in June 2019, I have been getting a lot of messages in my inbox about what materials I used and how much effort I put in to pass. So, I have decided to write a little bit of write-up to help people who might be considering booking to do the examination.
Schedule the exam date
The first thing I would advise is try schedule the examination first. This is like having a deadline to deliver a product, you are going to be on your own toes all the time trying to cover all the required topics to pass the exam. Any form of procrastination with respect to the scheduling of the exam may lead to failure to do the exam. You could decide to schedule the exam at least 3 months into the exam, this helps to work hard towards achieving the goal of passing the exam. The good thing here though is that, AWS allows you to cancel the exam 24hours before the appointed time.
Know the details of the exam
AWS Certified Developer Associate (DVA C01) will only test you from the developers’ perspective, there is no penalty for guessing answers, so you should attempt all questions. There are multiple choice questions where you are allowed to pick only one right answer from the list of options, and there is multiple response where you are allowed to choose more than one answers in the list of possible answers.
A candidate must score the minimum of 720 out of 1000 to be successful in the exam.
The following is a list of domains that will be tested and the corresponding % of the exam
- Deployment 22%
- Security 26%
- Development with AWS Services 30%
- Refactoring 10%
- Monitoring and Troubleshooting 12%
You can read more about the exam guide!
Be Prepared
There are a couple of materials for free but investing some money to buy materials needed to pass the exam would be helpful.
Whizlabs: Whizlabs is reputable for creating affordable world-class online certification training courses and practice tests that look like your real exams in terms of time allotted and the minimum marks you should get before you could be successful in any of the examinations. If you can pass all the practice tests in Whizlabs, you have a high chance of acing the actual examination. You can buy Whizlabs for AWS Certified Developer associate and start practicing. You can find them on https://whizlabs.com
Udemy Course: Udemy.com is an online training platform. Udemy has helped millions of people develop their careers and become better in whatever they learn on the platform. There are different instructors on the platform, and you can select them based on the number of reviews and the overall number of students for the course.
When I did my AWS Certified Solutions Architect, I used Acloud Guru, but this time around, I went for Stephan Maarek, Stephan has another approach to instructions, he does not only use a lot of diagrams to explain every domain that will come out of the exams, he also does not waste much of your time explaining things you don’t need. So, you will have enough information for you to develop and deploy to AWS in real life and also be able to pass your examination with ease.
You can also skim through the following URL to have a more knowledge about the exam:
Practice, Practice and Practice
The importance of practicing cannot be over-emphasized, the more you practice, the more you have a better understanding of the subject matter, not just AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam, but also applicable to every facet of life.
You should create an account on https://aws.amazon.com if you do not already have one. Amazon gives you free tier on some services on AWS for a year, after which you will pay for all the services that you use.
Having an account gives you the opportunity to put into practice all the theories you have learnt so far. Practicing what you’ve learnt increases confidence on the examination day and increases your chances of success.
Both Whizlabs and Stephan Maarek on Udemy.com have loads of practice tests to prepare you for the actual exam day. You can do one practice test as many times as you can until you are able to get minimum of 80% in each practice test.
Get some sleep
On the night before exam, get enough sleep, at least 7 hours so that your brain can remember all you had worked so hard to read. Sleeping less does not help you remember as your brain needs some rest for the big day ahead.
Calm your nerves
Examinations like this could be nerve-wracking, but always remember that “Pressures are for tires, stress is for steels, it’s just an examination”, not a war, so, on the exam day, never panic, just relax and go for it. You have worked hard over the past couple of months to prepare yourself for the day, now is the time to show result.
Achieve your goal
Now that you have started the exam, read the instructions carefully, also, read and understand the questions before you pick an answer. Sometimes, you are over-confident when reading the questions and you don’t finish the them because you probably have assumed that you know the answer, the tweak may be towards the end of the question, so it is always advisable to finish off the questions, understand them before picking the appropriate answers. In the end, you will come out of the exam the newest AWS Certified Developer Associate!
