I cleared my AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam a couple of weeks back(Jul 16, 2022), so I thought I'll share some feedback and tips on how to clear the exam.
Note: This article is just an opinion on how to go about these exams, please prepare fully before jumping onto the exam.

First things first, who should give this exam:

• Anyone who is looking to getting a job in the Cloud domain
• If you're working on AWS cloud at your work
• if you're a cloud enthusiast and are looking to test your skills

Even though to get a job as a Cloud Architect, the certification helps a lot, but keep in mind that having the certification alone does not help in securing a job because skills are after all above any certification. :)

Are there any prerequisites before I should attempt the exam?

• As such, there is no prerequisite but AWS expects you to have worked on AWS for at least 1 year before you give the exam.
• You should have a basic idea of Cloud, Networking and Virtualization.

When should I start preparing for the exam?

Every person has their own pace and requirements, according to which they can set up their exam but I would suggest to at least give yourself 3-4 months before the exam date to prepare.

The 3 to 4 months period is not all for study but understand that once you start preparing, at the start you will be studying a lot but once the syllabus will start to get on, you will be tired, so there will be weeks where you will be in a cool-down period and will not be studying at all for the exam. But if you are the kind of student who already has worked on cloud and want to just give the exam as quickly as possible, 45-60 days should be enough.

Where should I study from?

I personally took a udemy course(Stephan Maarek) and a test series from Jon Bonso comprising of 6 Practice tests. Some people take acloudguru's subscription which I think for an associate exam is an overkill but definitely helpful for a professional level exam.

Stephan is a great teacher and his hands on lectures are enough to cover most of the topics and Jon Bonso's (tutorialdojo.com) test series had questions which were more or less of same difficulty level as the actual exam and there was explanation for each question at the end of test series which was of great help.

I first watched the whole lecture videos of Stephan Maarek's course end to end and then tried a couple of exams from the test series. I was getting 70-75% marks (the marks required to pass in the exam is 72%) So I again glanced at the video lectures but this time with faster speed of videos and skipped the irrelevant parts. (0-40 days) Then I gave a couple of more tests and was still getting 75-80% marks. So I started to read the explanation from the questions of the test series and also went back to Stephen's video for the topic's that I was lacking in. (40-70 days). Last 15-20 days I just kept giving the test series again and I was hitting the 85-90% mark and I started to feel confident.

I got 84% marks in the final exam.

About the exam

I had scheduled my exam 01:00 AM (don't ask why) so I was feeling a little sleepy in between, I suggest you to schedule the exam at the time of the day when you are fully active.

There are 2 options for choosing to schedule your exam with: PSI and Pearson Vue I chose PSI but I suggest you to go with Pearson Vue

The exam cost is 150$ and if you clear one exam then in the next exam you'll get 50% discount.

In the exam

There is no negative marking in the exam so you should attempt all the questions. There are a total of 65 questions and you will get 130 minutes to attempt the 65 questions. Out of 65 there may be around 12 questions with more than one answer.
While attempting the exam, I suggest you go in a sequential fashion and answer every question and flag the question in case you have even slightest of doubts. Then do a 2nd round to the questions and check the flagged questions and think about the answers, if you feel confident unflag the questions. Then do a final round to the remaining flagged questions and give your best possible answer.

Recognize the patterns in which AWS asks questions

Okay, this might be a stupid advise but if you find a question in exam you don't have any clue about, there are some things you can do apart from guessing the answer -

While you give the Practice test series you'll find that there is psychological battle between you and the person who made the questions :P

For instance, let's say there are 2 options that you are confused with, one is saying that you need to create a Machine learning model and use that model in something and whatnot and the other option is the you can use a AWS service called SageMaker. Now of course AWS want to know if you know about the its services because we want to use the services instead of creating things from scratch, so there is a high probability that the answer is the 2nd option of Sagemaker.

Similarly, let's say you are attempting a question with more than 1 answer correct and the question wants to you to find out the true statements. Let's say the 4 statements are:

1. Use a NAT instance
2. Use a Security group with allow inbound rule at port 80
3. Use a NAT Gateway
4. Use a Security group with allow outbound rule at port 80

(These statements are completely random and just for the sake of explaining)

Now if you look at the statements closely you can argue that one of the option 1 and 3 are correct and one of the option 2 and 4 are correct. Both 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 can not be correct. Similar patterns can be extracted from questions having a 'All options are correct' kind of options.

There are many patterns that you will get habitual of once you give the practice tests but you have to train your mind to recognize only those patterns that will not change with the person who is creating the questions getting changed. Only apply these patterns only if you don't have any idea about the answer because these patterns can be completely wrong sometimes and your mind will wrestle with your intuition for the answer. If you have a feeling that some answer is just there because the examiner wanted to tease your brain, chances are you are right!

Again I want to insist that this last paragraph might be completely stupid and doesn't make any sense or it may be making a lot of sense if you have given too many MCQ exams. But please prepare fully for the exam and use these patterns in case you have no idea about the answer.

If you have any other questions regarding the exam of any kind, please let me know in comments!

Thank You!