My AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional Exam Experience (SAP-C02)

On August 6th, 2024, I passed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional Exam (SAP-C02))!

My primary study resource was Adrian Cantrill's SA Pro course. I have used a number of other study resources for prior exam passes, but I heard a number of recommendations on social media about Adrian's content. I started down the path with a different trainer, but quickly found that they were glossing over topics that I needed depth on. Adrian's content described topics at the depth I required. His paid content comes with multiple practice exams to give you a feel for what type of questions will be on the exam. Along with his paid content, Adrian also has some great Tech Fundamentals videos which are completely free. Because I do not come from a network engineering background, I found it helpful to brush up on things like VPN and BGP.

An excellent secondary resource is this GitHub repo of SAP-C02 notes. The repo contains consolidated notes on all of the topics I learned in training - it's not content provided by Adrian, but all of the SAP-C02 topics are covered. I didn't discover this repo until the morning of the exam, but I read through the notes twice before driving to the exam center. They were a good way to quickly reinforce all of the knowledge from the video series.

This exam is challenging. The questions and answers are longer than any exam I've ever taken. Amazon gives you 3 hours for 75 questions, which divides to 2m24s per question. I am a fast reader and it still took me 60+ seconds just to digest the questions. One of my colleagues reminded me of this excellent test-taking technique: "If it's a topic you don't know well, start ruling out answers to get as close to 50/50 as possible". I was able to do this on many questions - there is often one clearly disqualifying statement as part of a long answer. Fortunately, you will not find any "choose all that apply" types of questions. There are multiple choice, multiple answer questions, but they are always tagged with "Choose Two" or "Choose Three".

Good luck with your certification journey!