Yes, you heard it right I actually did take a bus to work that time. Last year, about the same time as now, I moved my family to the sunny city of Brisbane, Queensland Australia from Sydney. I had an offer from a big travel company whose HQ is based here. It was still pre COVID-19 period then so it was okay to take public transport. My team here is using Azure Cloud Services to do Data Engineering however by that time I have not much experience with Azure so I have to learn and catch up fast. In order to do that, my manager told all of us to take Azure certifications.
This article lays out my strategy on how to pass the AZ-900 certification and that includes the daily bus ride to work I had(will come to this, promise ;D ). Of course, everyone has a different preparation style for a certain exam or certification. The strategy I will mention here works for me as I have been
applying them since college and it’s what works best for me.
Pre-review/study practice test
Ever since college, I have always applied this strategy when I am preparing for an exam/certification test. I will always first do a pre-review/study practice test before I embark on learning or studying about something. I will find some practice exam or practice test about the topic or certification I am going to take and then just go through it and try to answer it to the best of my knowledge, it does not matter if I have prior knowledge or not, I just want to evaluate what I know and I don’t know about something. The result tells me how much more I need to learn or study about it. It will also help me gauge how much improvement I have achieved during succeeding practice tests.
In the case of AZ-900, I researched three possible sites where I can have my practice test.
1. Official Practice Test by MindHub
If you go to the site of Microsoft certification, you will actually see a small link there that points you to its official practice test. However, when you click it, you will see that you actually have to pay at least $130 for 30 days of access. For me, this is a lot of money to spend so I opted not to try it. They do have the free demo but will only give you five practice questions. I have not tried their questions but their description says their questions are similar to the actual exam questions. So, if you are up to it, you can try them.
2. ITEXAMS.com
I learned about this site from a colleague who uses it on his practice test and review. I love that it has a free tier and has plenty of practice questions for AZ-900(192 questions to be exact). I must say their questions are closely similar to the actual exam questions. It also has an explanation for the correct answer. They seem to update their questions regularly as well.
What’s annoying though is it can only display 5 questions per page and you have to click a captcha to go to the next page. If you want to activate or unlock a custom appearance like more questions per page then you have to upgrade to a premium account. I can’t complain enough though, you get real exam questions using the free tier and that’s what matters.
They also don’t have the timer and mark for review features just like the actual exam. But who knows, maybe they will add it in the future.
3. Whizlabs
Finally, I stumbled upon Whizlabs while reading Quora and I never regretted using them. They offer cloud certification practice tests as well as other courses that will help you pass any certifications. What’s best is, it is cheaper than the previous two considering you don’t need a subscription to have access to their practice test.
They mock the actual exam scenario where you can mark questions for review and the timer feature helps you rate yourself if you are able to finish the actual exam on time or not.
So I decided to try them and used them for my pre-review/study practice test. It is really helpful because they tracked your score and the number of attempts to the practice test. That way you can see your progress.
Check them out if you are interested. They always give vouchers and freebies. And also, you have lifetime access to those practice tests, sweet! right?!
Downtime study/review session
Alright, so after my pre-review/study evaluation test. I now know where to focus more on my study or in this case review for AZ-900 certification. What is good about Whizlab is that it gives you a report of your practice test showing where you have more incorrect answers. Based on that I can focus my lesson/review plans.
Remember that bus ride that I mentioned above? This is where it comes to play. The bus ride to/from work is downtime for me. I have always tried to use my downtime for something productive or learn new things, so this where I usually insert my review and study for certifications.
I have 30 mins bus ride going to work and another 30 mins going home so I make use of them to study/review for the certifications. I allowed five days to study the AZ-900 Certification course in ACloudGuru by Lars Klint. I used to have access to the company subscription so I leverage on that.
So I will be seated at the back of the bus while watching on my phone Lars Klint explain the topics for Azure fundamentals. I skimmed those topics I already know about or make the video speed at 4X to those I am familiar with. I focus more on those topics I have low scores on my practice tests. For 1 week I did this during my bus ride as well as while waiting for the bus.
For the next week, it’s all about the practice test. I will do one practice in the morning bus ride to work and another practice test on the evening bus ride home. I accessed the Whizlab practice test using my phone, it has the same experience while doing it on the laptop. Sometimes I am so engaged in a practice test that I will miss my stop or took the wrong bus home. Taking the wrong bus home gave me more time to practice tests though so it’s not bad at all. I did this practice test until the scheduled exam is one day away.
Schedule when ready
What I meant by this is that whenever I felt that I am ready to take the certification then that is the time I will book or schedule the actual certification exams. When do I know I am ready to take it is based on my practice test results. When I see that I got consistently high marks on the practice for the last three or four practice tests then I believe I am ready.
I will schedule the exam and then just continue with my bus ride practice test until the exam date.
For AZ-900, you must at least get an 80% score on the exam to pass it. So to make sure I will pass it, I always aim to get at least 90% or above score during my practice test consistently. That way I have a bit of margin of confidence during the actual exam. I always aim high so if I missed my 90% target at least I will still pass the 80% exam passing score. It’s always good to set yourself a goal so that you know where you going and what needed to be done to achieve it.
Point of no return — Exam date!
During the exam date, I did one practice test in the morning and then relax the whole afternoon. By the way, I’ve chosen the home or office proctored test as this was the time all the testing centers were closed due to COVID-19. So, this is also my first time taking an exam at home. It is really weird because I have to choose a time in the middle of the night where everything is quiet and the internet is fast. The proctored ask me to show the whole room taking my laptop with me circling around my test area, to see if nobody is around. Once, all the checks were done, the exam started.
I made use of my time to really read and review questions before marking the answers. It also helps that my practice test questions were really similar to the real questions. It makes the test smooth and the experience similar to the practice test as well. At the end of the exam, you will get your result if you pass or not. Luckily I passed!
So, that’s it! hopefully, you learn something from my experience.
