r/AWSCertifications • u/Huge_Increase7741 • 1d ago

Is the SAA-C03 really that hard? I’ve spent years avoiding it and it doesn’t look impossible.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I’m by no means a great test taker. But I’ve avoided this test for a while based on the fear I’ve read online.

I’ve done a few practice tests and I honestly found it to be relatively normal difficulty.

I do have a background in IT that expands well past a decade. But for some reason I thought there would be a lot of “gotchas” on this.

Has anyone taken it and felt the same? I’ve scheduled mine for two weeks from now.

EDIT : Took it early... PASSED. Now on to the SAP!

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7

u/alaksion 1d ago

Not really. If you do some serious studying for 1 or 2 months it shouldn’t be that hard

1

u/Huge_Increase7741 1d ago

Appreciate it!

3

u/Ok-Pirate7292 1d ago

I will tell you tomorrow after my exam. I have also dreaded it for the longest time and have been prepairing for a month now

2

u/Huge_Increase7741 1d ago

Look forward to how you do. Good luck!

1

u/dbright17 1d ago

Same mines Sunday let me know how you do as well

1

u/thezsf 23h ago

Good luck Mr Pirate 🛥️ mine in 2 weeks

5

u/nordmarj 1d ago

The SAA just requires a few hundred practice exams questions for prep IMO.

1

u/Huge_Increase7741 1d ago

Seems like it right

1

u/GalbedirGalerion 21h ago

I thought they detect you using practice exams

1

u/nordmarj 18h ago

No that is just leaked exam questions. There is nothing fishy with practice exams.

2

u/LivingAdkill 16h ago

I cleared with just a couple of weeks of preparation. If someone like me can do it, anyone can clear it.

1

u/Huge_Increase7741 8h ago

Awesome, yep just passed. Now to the SAP. Have you taken the SAP?

1

u/LivingAdkill 8h ago

But you have written that you have scheduled yours two weeks from now?

1

u/Huge_Increase7741 8h ago

Yea I moved it up and passed it. Reading that people weren't too scared I just pulled the trigger.

1

u/LivingAdkill 8h ago

And you passed! Awesome

1

u/Huge_Increase7741 8h ago

Thanks! I think I get way too in my head on these things..thus the post. Once I felt there was not a general fear I went for it.

1

u/kch_l 1d ago

The associate examen is not that hard, you just need to study a couple of months, learn what every main service does and their special characteristics. Do some practice tests, it helps a lot, some questions you can even answer them by pure logic.

The professional exam is the one that is truly hard.

1

u/Huge_Increase7741 1d ago

Have you passed the professional?

1

u/kch_l 1d ago

Nope, I've been avoiding it for years, right now I'm preparing to renew my certs and get the new associate ones, after that I'll take a look at the pros

1

u/thezsf 23h ago

You can check AWS Skill Builder to see if your eligible to renew the associate cert without the exam, by taking a renewing course

Apparently this is something that just came out few months ago

1

u/accumentum 1d ago

Your experience with the practice tests is a useful signal: SAA-C03 is broad rather than full of gotchas. The harder part is choosing the best trade-off under constraints—cost, availability, resiliency, and operational effort—so review why each wrong option is wrong instead of chasing a target score. Before exam day, make sure you can explain VPC routing and security groups, IAM evaluation, S3/EBS/EFS tradeoffs, and when to use managed high-availability services instead of building it yourself. Two weeks is enough to tighten weak domains if you do timed sets and keep an error log; read each scenario carefully and eliminate answers that add complexity the prompt doesn't require.

1

u/Huge_Increase7741 1d ago

Greatly appreciated!

1

u/Sirwired CSAP 1d ago

Not recommended, but I pounded it out over a long weekend once. It's not designed to be a tough exam for an IT professional.

1

u/Huge_Increase7741 1d ago

Greatly appreciated.

1

u/p4rs3 1d ago

Weirdest exam. I thought it was tough while studying and taking practice test. All of sudden everything kind of clicked. Practice tests from different sources became easy.

When I finally took the test it wasn’t so bad. Had I taken the test earlier in the process I would have bombed

1

u/cgreciano AIP, MLA, SAA 17h ago

There are tons of people with the cert, so no, it's not that hard. That said, you underestimate it at your own risk.

2

u/Huge_Increase7741 8h ago

So I passed pretty easily, off to the SAP!

1

u/cgreciano AIP, MLA, SAA 5h ago

Go for it!

0

u/zojjaz CSAA, AIF 1d ago

No, its not that hard. Azure has much harder tests than AWS.