A bit of my background: that's my first AWS certification. Never took any other IT certifications.
Actually not working with AWS currently.
A few years ago switched to data science, data analytics. I just worked with AWS infra for few months on one project (quite simple data pipelines) and decided to somehow leverage it to get at least one certification. That was about a year ago.
Yeah, that was a long road.
First stage. I prepared for about 1.5 months.
My prep materials were:
- Udemy course by Nikolai Schuler
- Udemy mock exams from Maarek & Singh (3 in total)
- TutorialsDojo mock exams (3 in total)
- TutorialsDojo guide pdf file
I was taking online exam but it was canceled due to technical reasons. Long story short they gave me voucher to retake the exam.
And… I did not do much about it.
But as the voucher deadline was approaching I decided it’s time to finally take it.
So my second stage started.
I knew I had the basics already. Needed to refresh knowledge and learn some peculiarities (oh boy! There are so many!).
So I decided to focus on mock exams to reveal my weak spots via trial and error and learn those missing concepts on the way.
One key addition was AI assistant project. By this time I already had been using Codex and Claude Code not only for coding, but also for life projects (e.g., fitness trainer). I created “AWS-MLA AI helper” repo (with agents.md, memory.md, progress.md, etc. - actually asked Codex or Claude to create and fill in the files based on my inputs). I used Codex, Claude and Gemini there. From my experience Codex was the most precise (and it always did web search before answering) but was poor explainer; while Claude and Gemini explained much better but sometimes made errors (actually I feel the same separation of expertise between them in other areas). So I usually used both - Claude/Gemini for explanation and Codex just to double check. I had 2 main modes of working with them:
- While taking mock exams in review mode - in case of wrong answer (or even correct one, but if I had doubts) I gave the question to AI assistant and asked to decompose my mistake - what concepts I should have used, what clues I should have paid attention to in the question prompt, etc. This way I both double checked if Udemy /TD logic was correct (sometimes it was not) and got conceptual understanding of the area I was weak at.
- After 1-2 exams I just copied all my wrong questions and answers to AI assistant to analyze my mistakes, reveal topics that needed attention and prepare plan to cover these gaps. Then asked to help me strengthen each of the areas according to specific playbook that we developed (like start with remembering key concepts, asking me questions, etc.).
Note: as always with AI you usually need multiple iterations to get satisfactory results; but the result is rewarding.
Also this Notion cheatsheet from Christian Greciano was of great help: https://psychedelic-cuticle-e74.notion.site/AWS-Machine-Learning-Engineer-Associate-MLA-C01-19686c7395e780e1bab0eac37d0401a0 .
So here is my review of all the prep materials I used:
- You need to start from some theory. I think 2 main Udemy courses (from Nikolai Schuler and Maarek) do not differ that much. They both have some flaws. But they both are good start. For this preparation I took Nikolai Schuler’s one. But I also had another Maarek’s course when just started to learn about AWS.
- Notion cheatsheet from Christian - very good tool for refreshing memory (though it lacks some important services and details, so you should not rely on it if you start preparing). Anyway kudos to the author for having shared the file with us.
- TD mock exams are praised here. For mysterious reasons in my opinion. I already wrote about it after my first preparation stage (https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/comments/1fn0hrw/comment/n0ebvcq/). Most questions are either easy or… debatable. Probably the situation has somewhat improved since then, but my main impression is the same - I was spending much more time figuring out what’s wrong with the questions than filling in my knowledge gaps. Very often Codex / Claude picked another answer rather than TD’s ‘correct’ answer.
- Udemy mock exams - actually I performed worse on them than on TD mock exams. But the questions I did wrong really pointed to the details I did not know or forgot (= new knowledge).
- TD guide - not very helpful. Quite superficial explanations, stupid examples (like Kinesis is for streaming data; example: company A needs to receive streaming data => they should use Kinesis).
- Codex/Claude/Gemini - AI helper (repo with md files) - just super great for conceptualizing and learning details. For me the best combo was practice tests with subsequent analysis of weak areas with the help of AI assistant(s).
PS: just a couple of random thoughts:
- Actually I was not confident today. I was really worried that I could have failed.
- And if you read those guys who come here and "modestly" brag about how they prepared for 2 weeks without previous experience in the field and aced the exam - I do not know… I think there are 2 options: 1) either such guys are exceptional ; or 2) they are just hmmm… not telling the whole story. By definition first ones are rarer.