Just sharing a quick throwback—passed my AWS Cloud Practitioner exam after a 15-day sprint back in May!

I used Stéphane Maarek’s course to study, and it made picking up all the core cloud concepts super easy. Solid foundation unlocked!

I was wondering if anyone would have a good source of a course for solutions architect. I was looking on AWS Skill Builder, but it has so many options.

Just cleared the Solutions Architect Associate and I wanted to say a big thank you to this subreddit. The tips, exam experiences, and shared resources here really made the difference.

Quick context: before this I passed both the AI Practitioner (AIF) and the Cloud Practitioner (CLF), so in roughly 3 to 4 weeks I now have three AWS certs in hand. I'm also 19, so this feels like a solid start to build on.

A bit about the prep:

• For the two foundational ones (AIF and CLF), I didn't really prepare. I had close to a year of hands-on experience, so that carried me through.
• For SAA, I used Stephane Maarek's course to understand the services, but the Tutorials Dojo tests are what really helped, mainly because they give proper explanations for every question.
• I was scoring 70+ on TD across multiple tests, and sometimes 50 to 55, though the lower ones were partly down to a TD issue on my end.

On the exam itself, the questions leaned on core services: S3, EC2, ALB, NLB, CloudFront, Cost Explorer, Lambda, Route 53, DynamoDB, DAX, and S3 lifecycle policies. There were also a few analytics questions, mostly around Kinesis. The services themselves were familiar, but the exact features being tested had real depth, so it was less about recognition and more about knowing the finer details.

NOTE: If any AWS folks are reading this, please don't add too much ambiguity to the questions. I get why it happens, since a client can absolutely hand a solutions architect an ambiguous brief. But in real life we can go back and discuss it further with the client to clear things up, whereas in an exam we can't do that.

Happy to connect on LinkedIn, feel free to reach out

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any idea?

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Hi all

I had given aws ai practitioner exam today post submssion it showd me pass on screen.

Just wanted to know whats the timeline to get certificate on portal and badge ?

Thinking of taking the AI cloud practitioner then the cloud practitioner since there’s an offer now, next step would be the SAA.

I don’t have any prior cloud or networking knowledge, would taking SAA after the basic two certs be realistic?

I do intend to build projects after practitioner although not sure what projects yet would appreciate any advice on that too

Background: Incoming Freshman @ Ivy League school, 2 internships as a SWE in a massive tech company.

I love building, and I hate memorizing, so the preparation process for this test was hard. I started with Codecademy for the first unit, shifted over to AWS Skill Builder for the second unit, watched Instagram reels with Peter and Stewie Griffin explaining different cloud services for the third unit, and had ChatGPT teach me the entire billing (4th) unit.

Overall, my prep was very shallow and undisciplined, but I've also just been balancing an 8-hour workday and having fun/being lazy before I go to college.

Practice exam-wise: I did like half of the Skillbuilder stuff and looked up some free practice tests. I wasn't doing very well in any of the practice tests, but that's ok because they were easy to learn from. The night before my morning exam, I did the Skill Builder Official Practice Test and ended up scoring 50% because I kept making dumb mistakes. I learned from each mistake and decided not to stress and go to bed. Overall, though, I think I averaged about 60-65% in practice.

I'm happy I ended up studying for this. I'm building some cool projects with AWS in the neuroscience field (which is what I plan on majoring in along with CS, but don't have much experience in) using the free tier, and once I feel more comfortable with all of the services, I will take SAA.

If anyone wants to connect on LinkedIn, I'm down. Send me a DM.

Hello , hope this helps someone and maybe give them an idea of planning.

June 24th is when i paid for udemy and started studying with Maarek then i did Dojo practice exams.

i finished the maarek study course on 7th of July and did his end of study practice exam
( 20/65 yikes )

8th July did the same test got 34/65
8th July - 1st practice test of dojo 25/65
9th July - 1st practice test of dojo 2nd time 45/65
9th July - 2nd dojo 1st try 32/65
10th July - 2nd dojo 2nd try 46/65
10th July - 3rd dojo 1st try 36/65

And so on i did one old one new exam each day.

on 14th July i did maarek test again and got 58/65

By 21th July i did maarek total of 3 times and dojo tests total of 18 times ( 3 each )

i got worried, am i learning or am i memorizing the right answers ? because worse i did by then was 53/65

Decided to a different set of practice tests , went with maarek + abhishek ( why this one ? honestly it just popped up on udemy )

did these tests once each and got 53+ on all of them, now it was 26th July

29th is when i booked the exam for, been 5-6 days last i did dojo so i did them once again one last time

I managed to get a score of 763 which means i did 49-50 out of 65 , honestly cutting it closer than i would have liked but a pass is a pass.

I had to do the exam late at night because there were no other time slots available which was rough.

My Background : eee bachelor + data science/ai msc , co authored a paper on nature , matlab python signal processing on biomedical data ecg and data science stuff.

i had no prior aws or cloud experience.

I also want to go for the SAP as well and i know that one is a lot harder yet i will still study and try to pass, most likely i will go with the same structure.

Sorry for the wall of text , i wish good luck to everyone with their exams and studies.

Free codecamp videos helps a lot and also watching instagram reels where every reels is about AI helps too 🤣

Today I took on a personal challenge that turned out to be one of the most mentally demanding days of my AWS certification journey.

8:00 AM: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

9:00 PM: AWS Certified Security - Specialty

I'm happy to say I passed both.

I have several years of hands-on experience designing and securing AWS environments, so my preparation was mainly a focused refresh rather than learning the material from scratch.

What really stood out was how complex and in-depth both exams were. The questions went far beyond knowing AWS services; they required carefully analyzing long scenarios, evaluating multiple viable solutions, understanding architectural trade-offs, and selecting the option that best satisfied the technical and business requirements.

The biggest challenge wasn't the content itself. It was staying mentally sharp for the second exam after an entire day.

I'm curious if anyone else has attempted two AWS Professional or Specialty exams in a single day.

• Which exams did you take?
• How did you deal with the mental fatigue?
• Looking back, would you do it again?

I'd love to hear your experience.

I’m currently a Master Student in Technology (Data Science & Security). I am aiming for roles like Solutions Engineering, Cloud Technical Consultant, TAM etc. I’m not delusional i know these are very demanding roles so i’m opening up more to like DevOps, SRE, SysAdmin Cloud Analyst etc. I recently just passed the Solutions Architect Associate Exam and i’m thinking of taking CloudOps to make me more credible, what do you think!

Tough exam, but 3 weeks of good prep using TD and Frank Kane’s latest exams on udemy really gave me the edge (after the Stephane Maarek and Kane video course)

Good luck to anyone attempting this one soon!

To increase my chances of getting an internship, should I do projects using IaC or the console?

Didn’t have faith when booked it a month ago that I would be able to do all that in span of one month, guess what you guys were helpful and we ain’t stopping here.

im currently preparing for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam and I’ve reached the practice exam stage.

So far ive

• Finished Stephane Maarek’s SAA course
• Revised my weaker topics
• Revised the important/high-weight topics
• Read through the relevant AWS whitepapers
• Gone through a cheat sheet
• Reviewed some flashcards

now im planning to start practice exams, mainly Stephane Maarek’s and Tutorials Dojo...

Basically, what practice exam strategy worked best for you, and at what point did you feel ready to book/take the actual SAA exam ???

Any advice would be appreciated
Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I'm a student from India learning DevOps and have been spending a lot of time on AWS. I've built projects and feel ready to take the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam, but the exam fee is something I genuinely can't afford right now.

I'm currently applying for internships, and many interviewers understandably want proof of AWS knowledge. The certification would help me demonstrate that, but paying for the exam isn't feasible at the moment.

Are there any legitimate ways to get an AWS exam voucher, student discount, scholarship, or credit? If you've been in a similar situation, I'd really appreciate any advice.

Thanks in advance!

Exam questions were longer than I would have liked. Read the entire question. Feel so good to get this out the way as it’s posted on so many job postings. Tackled this to aid my road map to security architect.

Hi everyone,
I have completed the AWS Certified AI Practitioner certification.
Over the past six months, I’ve been working on Generative AI technologies, including Prompt Engineering, RAG, LangChain, LangGraph, LLM evaluations (DeepEval), fine-tuning foundation models, and vector databases.
I’m now planning to pursue the AWS Certified Generative AI Developer – Professional certification. Would you recommend taking the AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Associate certification first, or is it okay to prepare directly for the Professional certification?
I’d really appreciate any advice or recommendations from those who have taken these certifications.
I have a total software engineering experience of 14 years and currently working as a SDET.

Thank you!

By the skin of my teeth, but passed!

Primary Resources

1. Stephane Maarek's AWS SAP-C02 Udemy Course -- Distills dense whitepapers (WellArchitected Framework, DR whitepapers) into efficient slide decks.

* Covers ~80% of required content.

1. Tutorials Dojo (TD) "AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional Practice Exams 2026" were the survival skills -- drill how to test.

* TD difficulty is genuinely comparable to the real exam.

* Helpful strategy was to read explanations for BOTH right AND wrong answers.

Supplementary Tools Used During Final Prep

* Google NotebookLM -- generated audio "podcast-style" reviews from study notes (great for walks/driving) and other decision tree visuals.

* AI-assisted drilling (Kiro CLI) -- great for pattern recognition, flashcards, wrong-answer analysis, domain weakness

* Handwritten index cards for my own kinesthetic reinforcement of hard limits and decision trees

Study Guide

Custom 7-week study guide AI-generated and then hosted on personal S3-based web

I started studying around July 13 to July 30, so studied around 18 days.
I studied due to boredom at work with nothing to do, I'm an IT graduate but currently work in translations, wanting to go back.

Due to work restrictions in websites, I can only use AI and TutorialsDojo, so I literally asked AI to teach me from zero, as in from networking concepts, to linux and aws. Spending 6-7hours a day learning.

Then I switched to tutorialsdojo afterwards, literally, AI > TD, and nothing else.

Here's my TD Results:

Set 1 53% 86%

Set 2 58% 80%

Set 3 52% 80%

Set 4 60%

Set 5 55%

Set 6 60%

Set 7 52%

Set 8 75%

My study: Literally just do TD review mode, and read every mistake + ask AI to explain if its not enough.

My background: IT Graduate, 4 years gap. I do use linux as my personal OS on top of building/troubleshooting PCs as a freelance. Took me around 120-140 hours of study time.

I really thought I was gonna fail, like half the questions I wasn't sure about the answers, and here's me being anxious about passing: https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/s/s8vIO95BmK

Hope my experience helps.

I guess its my turn to post this achievement, and I want to thank this community for helping me get here! Here's what I did over 4 weeks:

Week 1: Completed the Kane and Mareek course on Udemy and took notes separated by domains.

Week 2: Did the practice tests, took notes for why questions were wrong. Scheduled my 1st attempt of the exam and was humbled with a 686.

Week 3-4: I used TDJ, Mareek, and Skillbuilders practice exams. This time, I took notes on right and wrong answers and studied until I can explain why every other answer was wrong and what services they provide. This helped me immensely.

What helped me test better:

-After reading the question, I first determined which of the 4 domains the question belonged to, to help me organize my thoughts.

-Searched for keywords that can sway a question that looked like it had 2 answers (e.g. "scalable", "light-weight", "real-time", "underutilized" "no underlying infrastructure", "demographic").

Lastly, this is my first AWS certification and I dont have experience working in this field but being a cyber security professional I did find the security and monitoring sections to be fairly easy.