How I Wrote My AWS Cloud Practitioner Exams and Passed

I was able to score 970/1000 on my AWS Cloud Practioner Exams while relying on some online resources alone.

In this article, I want to share my experience on how I was able to prepare, pay & book my cloud practitioner exams.

Being Certified by AWS gives you some level of confidence and also broadens your scope on how AWS services work at the foundational level.

I booked and took my exams on November 30th, 2023, and instantly had a grade of PASS. This means after you're done taking your exams you'll know whether you passed or failed.

The Preparation

One thing you should know about the AWS Cloud Practioner exams is that it costs $100 to write the exams, so before you're certain to write the exams make sure you've prepared well and have taken some recommended courses to give you the level of understanding you need. There are a lot of courses available online, you can get some of them from Udemy, A Cloud Guru, etc.

But I never bought any of these courses, since my budget was not enough to afford so I relied on W3Schools Partnership with AWS to learn AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials which is free to learn from AWS. This 6-hour course gave me a basic understanding of how AWS services work.

After carefully watching and reading through the video course, I realized I am 40% ready for the exams and I still need to prepare in order not to fail. I can't lose my $100 just like that lol 😅.

At the end of the course, you'll be made to take your first trial of the test by scoring above 70%. I failed and scored less than 70%. But After the second trial, I passed with over 90%.

The sample test didn't give me enough confidence to think I was capable of taking the actual exams, so I needed to take more practical questions until I was okay with myself.

Upon trying different online websites, I was able to stick with these few websites that have mock questions. The mock question helped me to understand some of the services & vantage topics like the Well-Architected Framework ..etc., so even if there are questions related to a service, I can easily figure my way out to answer it correctly.

The following websites helped with my mock test practices:

Exams Topics - AWS Cloud Practitioner:
This website has a community base that even explains some of the reasons why an answer is correct, and their opinion on some of the questions helped me with the preparations. Exam Topics have over 900+ questions you can use.

Test Prep Training:
Test Prep gave me the feel of answering questions and later viewing the actual answers.

Passemall.com
Passemall.com provides a quiz-like approach for learning and taking your practice exams.

AWS Boy
AWS Boy seems to give you an experience similar to the actual exams, but they provide you with reasons for wrong and correct answers.
They have 3 different practice quizzes each containing 65 questions, which was helpful.

AWS Exam Prep
This exam prep from AWS gives 20 questions to test your skills while learning.
It is a free course you can obtain from the AWS training and certification website by creating an account with the AWS Skill Builder.

After going through all these websites and making sure I was well prepared, I also saw this course from Udemy, which is a paid practice test with six practical exams of 65 questions each. Practice Exams AWS certified cloud practitioner
I carefully went through this course and made sure I read the reason for a correct and wrong answer. This practice exams course gave me a solid foundation and took my understanding of AWS services to the next level and I was now ready for the Actual Exams. ( This was only the resource I paid for ).

Booking with Pearson Vue

For you to write the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exams, you would have to make an appointment with a Test Centre, in this case, AWS supports Pearson Vue. Pearson Vue will be the one to help you pay for the exams and book the date & time you want to take the exams. You can choose to take the exams online or with a partnered physical examination center that is closer to you in your locality.

I was thinking of doing it online, but I realized since it is my first certification exam I need to go to an actual examination center, but besides that, there were rules I needed to follow if I wanted to take it online, and I would need to make sure I had a stable internet connection, turn my laptop cameras on, etc. I don't need to go through all these since an Examination center can provide me with some of these things seamlessly which is even free and also guide me throughout the whole process.

Before you can schedule for the exams you need to create an AWS Certification account.

Which is going to help schedule the exams. After selecting a Test Centre and Booking a Date and time. You need to now conclude by paying for the examination fees. $100.
Before you can pay for the examination fees, you will need to purchase a voucher from either AWS or Pearson Vue. In my case, I had difficulty paying for the exam fees so I contacted a friend who knows a friend that works with Pearson Vue. In my case, I am in Accra, Ghana so I was directed to the closest Pearson Vue Test Centre to get my Purchase done.

The Actual Day

Before the day of the actual exams, I made sure to visit the Test Centre to enquire about what was required for me to be able to write the examination.

The only thing that I needed to make sure my ID cards reflected the exact name I used to register for my examination certifications and I needed to present 2 physical ID Cards ( Identity Cards with my name on them).

I submitted my Voters ID Card & my Ghana Card which both included my name. I scheduled for 2 pm and I should be at the Test Centre 30 minutes before that time.

It was Thursday 30th November and I boarded a public transport and got to the test center at 12.30 pm which was far before the reporting time. I took the opportunity to relax and also went through some questions and answers before I was called to Write the exams.

The exams took 90 minutes and were given 65 questions. Funny enough I finished answering all 65 questions within 30 minutes before the time and then reviewed all the questions to make sure I was ticking the right boxes.

What is Next ?

AWS Cloud practitioner is the foundational level of how AWS Cloud works. There are a series of roadmaps to follow to further certify yourself as either an AWS Solution Architect or DevOps Engineer, etc. You can follow this link to learn more about the career paths you can take after certifying yourself as a cloud practitioner.

Bonus Tip: The most demanding is being certified as an AWS Solution Architect.

If you found this information very useful don't forget to also share your experience or say something in the comment section.