AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification (CLF-C02) — Preparation Guidelines and Plan
How I prepare for AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam in a month
The aim of this article is to share my learning plan regarding the “AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam.” By profession, I am a software engineer with 6+ years of experience in full-stack development, but I don’t have any experience with DevOps tools or AWS services and technologies. So I decided to include this in my 2024 resolution. This certification doesn’t require any prior cloud experience. Even if you are from a non-IT background, you can easily make it possible in one month. You only require motivation and commitment.
Online Course on Udemy:
I did the following course of “Stephane Maarek” on Udemy. This course is extremely good. I recommend you go with this course.
[NEW] Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02
Preparation Plan:
I read multiple articles and watched videos on “How to Prepare for the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam in 7 Days.” You can also follow that plan. But for me, it’s quite hard to do all the things in a week because I am working full time and didn’t get enough time to prepare for the exam in a week. So to make it easy, I make a plan for a month with my full-time job along with housekeeping stuff.
From Day 1 to Day 21: The above course has 23 sections. From the first section to the last section, he explains everything from the very basics about “What is Cloud Computing?” to advanced topics. The first two sections are Introduction and Code & Slides Download. These sections don’t take a lot of time. The remaining 21 sections have the main and important topics related to the exam. I did one section per day, and it took 21 days for me to complete the course. Each section’s content took a different time, but it varies from 15 minutes to 1 hour.
From Day 22 to Day 25: I spent around 4 days revising all the course material that I learned in 21 days. Now, each day, I revise five sections. So it took another 4 days to re-watch and re-learn all the concepts again.
On Day 26 & Day 27: In addition to the above course, I did the “6 Practice Exams | AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02” course of the same Instructor on Udemy. The practice test questions are almost same as the questions in the final exam. Each day, I solved 3 exams. So it took 2 days to solve the exam questions that are almost same as the final exam.
Last 3 days(From Day 28 to Day 30): Revise the course material again according to your mistake in the practice exam. Learn the concepts that you made wrong in the practice test. I resolved the exam questions again. If you took 80% on each exam, then you are good to go for the final exam, and I am 100% sure you will pass the exam.
On Day 31: Book the exam and do it. For the final exam, you can do it from home or at the institute. From home, you have to go for a security check, and they monitor your activities during the exam. I am not comfortable with all the security checks, etc. So I booked my exam at the institution nearby my home according to the exam appointments available.
Alternative Exam preparation material:
- If you don’t want to purchase the practice exams, then I recommend you go with the Youtube channel “sthithapragna” [https://www.youtube.com/@sthithapragnakk]. This channel also has exam dumps, and in some videos, the author gives tips and tricks about the exam and answers questions about how to handle the exam.
For example, if you watch this video: “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPf96Xbaico," the author explains the questions properly. - I forked the Github repo from ‘Kanani Nirav’ and here you are in the practice-exam directory, where you will find around 23 exams. You can prepare for the final exam. “https://github.com/muhammad-usman-108/AWS-Certified-Cloud-Practitioner-Notes”
- You can check the several questions on Quizlet platform related to the topic “AWS Cloud Practitioner”. For example: https://quizlet.com/search?query=aws+cloud+practitioner&type=all&useOriginal=
Note: Both alternative options help me really well. But go with the exam dump or YouTube channel once you complete the course.
Exam Format & Passing Criteria:
The exam includes 65 questions and has a time limit of 90 minutes. You need to score a minimum of 700 out of 1000 points (70%) to pass the exam. The question format of the exam is multiple-choice (one correct response from four options) and multiple-response (two correct responses from five options). The exam consists of four main topics with a weighted percentage as defined below:
- Cloud Concepts (26%)
- Security and Compliance (25%)
- Technology (33%)
- Billing and Pricing (16%)
Unscored Questions:
Out of 65 questions, the exam includes 15 unscored questions that do not affect your score. AWS collects information about performance on these unscored questions to evaluate these questions for future use as scored questions. These unscored questions are not identified on the exam.
After the Certification:
After obtaining the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification, you gain a comprehensive understanding of fundamental AWS cloud concepts, services, and best practices. The certification validates their ability to navigate the AWS Cloud and provides a solid foundation for further AWS certifications and career advancement in cloud computing. Overall, the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification equips candidates with the essential skills and knowledge needed to start their journey in cloud computing and provides a solid foundation for building a successful career in the AWS ecosystem.
What’s next?
Ultimately, the next steps after obtaining the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification depend on individual career aspirations, industry trends, and learning objectives. I am planning to upskill my knowledge of AWS cloud services and architecture. So I am learning now for the “AWS Cloud Architect Associate” certification. I hope I will make it until the end of this year.
Have any questions?
That’s ALL what I did for the certification. If you have further questions, please feel free to write me on LinkedIn 😊
