general-tips

General tips

1. Don't book exam ahead. Book only after you have fully finished all courses and labs in the given guides below and for the nearest date as possible. By this you won't put much pressure on yourself and you can prepare in a comfort learning pace.
2. If you have started your preparation for the exam, DON'T MAKE BREAKS. Make sure you learn every single day. If you will make 2 or more days long breaks, than it is highly possible that you will forget the most of the learned information and your overall preparation will be inefficient.
3. Plan your vacations and internal family affairs accordingly in advance to make sure that they won't interfere with your preparation.
4. Recommended learning time for each day: 2 hours and more
5. Try to dedicate each section from the course's below for 1 or 2 days of learning. For example in Day 1 you fully complete the section on EC2 instance fundamentals. If you finish the section earlier than your normal 2 hours of learning, then don't start new section. Make sure that section's info has sinked propely in your mind. Review additional info from AWS Docs or AWS ReInvent videos on the given section topic.
6. Use time trackers for your preparation. Use Pomodoro technique to turn your 2 hours of learning into digestable focused learning time intervals. To learn more about this technique check out the great lecture from Washington State University professor Marty Lobdell
7. Sleep well. Don't learn if you feel tired. Sleep is better than coffee.
8. Better to take exam from testing center. Try to avoid taking exam online from home if you want to save your nerves. Taking exam from home requires a lot of additional organizational efforts from your side, while you can avoid them in testing center and solely focus on passing the exam.
9. One day before your actual exam, review your flashcards and notes. Don't overlearn at that day. The last day before exam must be an easy refresher and you must feel yourself prepared. Sleep well and do some other fun activities. On the actual exam day don't learn any exam preparation materials. Keep your mind fresh and relaxed.
10. Better to book exam after morning hours from 12 to 4 pm hours interval. By this you will ensure that you have sleeped well and had a good breakfast and have enough time to get to the testing center.
11. When exam starts, read all screen instructions carefully.
12. You have approximately two minutes for each question. Don't overthink and spend too much time on one question. You have option to mark the question for review and go back to them after you went through all questions and use your remaining time to answer them.

13. ⚠️ Use elimination technique to find the right answer ⚠️. Discard all the choices that are certainly wrong in your opinion. Then, for example if you have remaing two choices and they both seem valid answers to you, then keep in mind that the the most complex solution which requires a lot of efforts to set up with high probability is the wrong one.

14. You will not receive your exam result immediately. You will have to wait from 1 to 5 working days until your exam results will be published. More often it takes from 1 to 2 days to receive results via your email address specified during exam registration on PearsonVue
15. After successfully passing the exam, AWS gives you 50% discount on your next exam. You can find the coupon code under the Benefits tab in your certification account:
16. Other good discounts can be found from the announcements in the following local Kazakhstan telegram groups:
    • https://t.me/aws_notes
    • https://t.me/devsecopskz
    • Subscribe to mailing list from Stephane Maarek's corporate site to get announcement on course discounts