Personal Tutor
I recently stumbled upon a super effective way to prep for my AWS certification using ChatGPT, and I’m honestly excited to share it. Whether you're grinding through certification prep (like I am) or studying for any exam, this might just be the secret weapon you didn’t know you needed.
Here’s what I’ve been doing with ChatGPT Plus (though this totally works on the free tier too!):
Instant Quizzes on the Fly: Whenever I want to test myself, I just ask ChatGPT to fire off some multiple-choice questions or quick quizzes. The best part? It feels like a custom quiz tailored exactly to what I need to focus on.
Clear Explanations in Real-Time: Stuck on a tricky concept? ChatGPT breaks it down for me in simple terms and takes me through the logic step-by-step. No more Googling for hours hoping to find the right explanation.
Creating Extra Practice Material: When I feel like I need more than just notes, I ask ChatGPT to whip up additional practice problems. I’ve even had it generate examples on AWS architecture for my Solutions Architect exam prep—it’s like having an endless source of study material.
Voice Mode for a True Tutor Experience: Here’s the kicker—I’ve been using ChatGPT in voice mode. It’s like having a real conversation with a tutor, and it makes reviewing topics feel way more engaging. You can literally quiz yourself while going for a walk, no books required!
Quizzing Example
Below is an example of how our interaction went—quizzing me on topics, providing feedback, and guiding me through key concepts.
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“So I have been studying for AWS certifications. It's been helpful for my work, and I was wondering if you could act as a tutor for me, maybe help quiz me, teach me, correct me when I'm wrong, that sort of thing.”
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Absolutely, I'd be glad to help you with your AWS studies! Which certification are you focusing on, and are there specific topics or services you'd like to start with? We can go through questions, concepts, or any areas you want to focus on.
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“What are the largest topic areas on the test? Let's start there and then we can decide what we want to delve into.”
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The AWS Solutions Architect exam covers a broad range of topics. The major areas include: 1. Design Resilient Architectures: This focuses on designing multi-tier architecture solutions, decoupling mechanisms using AWS services, and designing highly available and fault-tolerant architectures. 2. Design High-Performing Architectures: This area involves identifying elastic and scalable compute solutions, selecting high-performing and scalable storage solutions, and designing high-performing networking solutions. 3. Specify Secure Applications and Architectures: This includes securing application tiers, selecting appropriate data security options, and designing secure access to AWS resources. 4. Design Cost-Optimized Architectures: This focuses on identifying cost-effective storage, compute, and database services based on requirements, as well as designing optimizations for cost in architectures. Would you like to start with one of these areas, or is there another topic you're more interested in?
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“I think right now the most helpful thing for me would be to start with quizzing so I can get an understanding of where I'm at. So why don't you pick one of those topics, generate up a quiz question, ask me about it, and then we can go from there.”
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Sounds like a plan! Let's start with "Design Resilient Architectures." Here's a question for you: Question: You're designing a multi-tier web application in AWS. The application needs to be highly available and fault-tolerant. Which combination of AWS services would you use to achieve this? Choose the best answer: A) Amazon EC2 with Auto Scaling, Amazon RDS with Multi-AZ deployments, and Elastic Load Balancing. B) Amazon EC2 with instance store, Amazon S3 for storage, and Amazon CloudFront for content delivery. C) Amazon RDS with Read Replicas, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon SNS for messaging. D) Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, Amazon Glacier for backups, and Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). What's your answer and reasoning?
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“OK, I would go with A. So EC2 will be your compute platform, since that's the infrastructure as a service. The autoscaling group will allow you to scale to whatever traffic needs the web application needs. On the back end, RDS will be your database and data store. Multi-AZ will allow you to be fault tolerant, since you're running on multiple availability zones. And I think that hits all of the requirements to the question.”
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Excellent reasoning, and you're absolutely right! Option A is the best choice. Amazon EC2 with Auto Scaling ensures that you have the right number of instances to handle varying traffic, and Elastic Load Balancing distributes incoming traffic across those instances. Amazon RDS with Multi-AZ deployments provides high availability and failover support for…
With this kind of back-and-forth, ChatGPT has become an essential part of my study routine, making exam prep feel more interactive and engaging.
Whether you're studying for tech certifications, academic exams, or just expanding your skills, ChatGPT can be a flexible, interactive study partner. From quizzing yourself to getting clear explanations, it’s been incredibly helpful for my AWS exam prep. And the best part? You don’t need the paid version for most of these features—the free tier works just fine for these kinds of interactions.
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Sean Coughlin