How I Passed the AWS Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 Exam in 3 Months:My Study Tips and Tricks

3 min readSep 6, 2023

Hello there,

If you are interested in taking the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam, this guide will help you make your preparation smoother.

In Sep 2023, I took the SAA-CO3 exam. It took me 3+ months of preparation and practice to pass the exam. You can find my certification details here

Let’s jump right into what i had used for preparation.

Materials Used:

Courses:

As long as the course covers AWS exam services, you are good to take it.

Other courses which cover AWS exam services:

Practice Tests:

Notes:

When it comes to course , I have mainly focused on getting clear understanding of each individual service.
I spent around 1-2 hours each day.
If i am watching EC2 section , I would watch it without taking notes at first and then in second go I will write down notes with 2x speed.
This second time watching and taking notes helped me understand the topic much more clearly
Once i have done going through all the services in the course , I have started taking practice tests.
For each service , I used to explore AWS console on how the UI looks for each service creation and what are all the available inputs are there.This will help in creating a visual picture of services.

I didn’t do any revision of all the topics covered in the course before taking the practice test. I just took the first test right after course completion just to understand where i stand. I took my first practice test from Stephan’s . I got only 60 % score. As you could see After the test, I have realised i need revision of all the topics.
I have read through this notes once to revise all the topics and again took the same practice test. This time i got 86%.
I got the confidence at this point and started taking practice tests one after another.
I would do practice test one day and next day i would revise attempted questions.
Before taking new practice test , I used to revise previous practice test questions both correct and incorrect ones. This greatly helped me in establishing questions pattern.
If i get low score in any practice test(<80% or < 78%) then i would again revise the notes and take it again.If we get low score in second attempt as well we can review the questions to understand where we are getting wrong. Whether it’s because of knowledge gap , unable to recall the existing info, silly mistakes or unknown topic.
It’s perfectly fine to receive a low score on practice tests, as long as you take the time to review and comprehend both your mistakes and correct answers.
After completing both practice tests , you could have completed 780 questions which is enough to grasp questions pattern.

I revised the notes 3–4 times. You could follow any notes in online but make sure to stick to the notes.
Don’t overflow your brain with too many notes only take reference at most from 1–2 online notes.
I revised these notes once before taking Stephane’s second practice test, Next before taking Neal’s practice tests and before taking actual AWS exam.

Whenever you are unclear about any topic try reading faqs for that service.
Create AWS account and explore the services.
Consider practice tests as learning opportunity and do no try to cram the correct answers instead try to understand the explanations
Once you’ve completed your preparation, you can access and attempt the official AWS exam preparation questions via this link.

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All the best for your certification exam.