Passed And Verifed

Thank you, subreddit, for all the help and tips!!!!

TIMELINE:

Took me about 60 days, studying about 2-3 hours per day (while working full-time, etc.).

WHY

I’ve been a Technical Account Manager with a focus in IAM and GRC for 2 years, 2 Years as a Sales Engineer, and 1 year as a tech support.

CERTS/EDUCATION

• CS degree from WGU
• Went on a weird “cert hell” run: AZ-900, AWS CCP , Net+ Sec+, SC-300 (Nov 2025), AZ-500

STUDY PLAN:

(Not affiliated with any of my materials)

Used Josh Madkors study method of priming, etc.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTlvanfiFrw&t=244s

I also got his Free Anki Deck.

I got a Udemy Course by TIA, saw it was too long, and just read the PDF. After each PDF, I went through the Josh Madakor Anki deck for each section. It took me about a week to get through all the questions. I did, however, notice some errors in the deck, so after I went through all of them once, I stopped using it. I just brute-forced it for pass number one, ensuring I got every answer correct at least 1-2 times.

I then used LearnZapp and the “Inside Cloud and Security” cram video, listening to it while cleaning and driving (8 hours). I went through the 2k LearnZapp questions once (which took about 2 weeks).

Then I got PocketPrep and went through all 1k questions until I got them all correct. This is where my refining happened. For any question I didn’t understand, I made multiple flashcards on my own. I probably made 1-2k extra flashcards on top of the question banks.

After that, I got Quantum exams and a couple of Udemy practice questions. For each question, I made more flashcards.

Summary of the learning phase: Practice questions, and make flashcards to understand the concepts.

Having Sec+, Net+, and SC-300 admittedly gave me a huge edge. Also, being a Technical Account Manager, I tend to be more managerial and business-focused than technical, which also helps.

TEST DAY

Went in 30 minutes early.

My confidence level was at 60% overall while I took it.

50% of the questions were hard, 25% were easy, and 25% were medium. And when I rate them, I mean it was easy to understand what the question was asking and the options available. To be clear, they were all "hard". Just some were "easier" to understand than others.

At 100 questions, the test stopped. I was 90% sure I passed since I heard it stops there if you pass, and typically keeps testing you if you are failing (not sure how true that is).

And BOOM - CONGRATS!!!!

EDIT: It took 18 days after I got endorsed to offically get the word.

Exam Date: May 18th, 2026
Fully Certified Date: June 6th, 2026