How to pass the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam?

The AWS SAA-C03 exam has 65 questions in 130 minutes. Here's the proven study plan:

**6-Week Plan:**

Week 1-2: Core services
- EC2 (instance types, pricing models, placement groups)
- S3 (storage classes, lifecycle, cross-region replication)
- VPC (subnets, security groups, NACLs, NAT Gateway)

Week 3: Databases & Storage
- RDS Multi-AZ vs Read Replicas
- DynamoDB, ElastiCache
- EBS types (gp3, io2, st1)

Week 4: High Availability
- Load Balancers (ALB vs NLB vs CLB)
- Auto Scaling, Route 53 routing policies
- CloudFront distributions

Week 5: Security & Cost
- IAM policies, STS, Cognito
- KMS, Secrets Manager
- Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor

Week 6: Practice exams
- Minimum 3 full practice exams
- Review every wrong answer

**Passing score:** 720/1000. Most people pass in 4-8 weeks of focused study.