AWS Certified Data Analytics - Specialty (DAS-C01) Exam Experience: Copy This Study Approach to Pass

I recently passed AWS Certified Data Analytics - Specialty (DAS-C01), so I am sharing my experience.

Table of Contents

Exam Results

• Score: 842/1000 (passing score: 750)
• Exam date/time: Sunday, March 31, 2024, 15:30–
• Pass notification (email): Monday, April 1, 2024, 19:15

Background Knowledge

• I had already passed SAA-C03, DVA-C02, and SOA-C02
• At work, I mainly use services that are integrated into applications, such as SQS, SNS, Kinesis, and DynamoDB

Study Method (Conclusion: CloudTech Only + ChatGPT)

I went through the CloudTech question bank three times. Specifically, I studied using the method I introduced in my article about taking the SOA exam. Please check that article for the details.

The Actual Exam

• There were a lot of questions around S3, Data Pipeline, Glue, EMR, Kinesis, DMS, Redshift, and Lake Formation.
• My impression was that 30–40% of the questions were close to past questions. However, most of the rest were new to me, and compared with the AWS certifications I had taken before, the ratio of past-question-like items felt lower.
• Honestly, I panicked a bit, but because I had studied by understanding why each answer was correct rather than just memorizing answers, I somehow managed to survive (all thanks to ChatGPT).
• CloudTech includes detailed explanations for every question, which really helped (shameless plug).

Thoughts

Because this was not an exam you can clear just by grinding past questions, there were many questions where you would get stuck if you did not properly understand the material. On the other hand, if you study based on real understanding, you can still handle unfamiliar questions through elimination and reasoning.

Final Thoughts

It was really valuable to systematically learn how a large-scale platform like AWS designs and operates data analytics infrastructure.

The CloudTech × ChatGPT study method is unbeatable!