How to pass the level 1 certification - My experience

[ivanzcai]

Important update: Contents for the certification have been recently updated, please visit https://academy.apigee.com/courses/certification for more up-to-date detail.

Hi all,

I’ve cleared my Apigee level 1 certificate just recently and I want to contribute back to the Apigee community by sharing my experience, resources and recommendations here. I am hoping that this post will be useful to those who are planning or in the process of getting the level 1 certification.

The inspiration for me to create post came from @Anil Sagar's post about his experience with level 1 certification. His post has helped me in a lot of ways (Please check it out if you have seen it yet). I am hoping that through this post, I can offer some additional or new useful resources for those who needed it.

I recognized that everybody has their unique way to prepare for tests, so some of my approaches and recommendations might not be the best way for you depending on your attributes and experiences. However, if any part of my post is in anyway helpful to you, then I think I have achieved my purpose.

How much preparation do I need?

The amount of time you’ll need to prepare for level 1 certification depends on your level of experience and familiarity with Apigee edge and BaaS development. As a rough guide, for someone who has been working with Apigee extensively for a while (1 year plus), I would recommend that you would still spend at least couple of weeks of solid effort (3+ hours of study per day) to dive into the details of topics that you might already know about and to cover off any components such as some of the new features that you might not have great deal of experience. For those who are inexperienced with Apigee, I suggest that you need at least a month of solid effort to get to a level that you might pass the exam on your first go.

Please note this is cert exam is one of the hardest multiple choice exams that I have ever encountered due to the wide range of materials it covers, the depth in detail that it goes into for some it’s topics and the style of the questions. In addition, the pass mark needs to be 70% or above, which were never case for any of my past tertiary education exams. It took me couple of months of solid effort (3-4 hours daily) and couple of attempts to pass this exam. I know some colleagues who have taken 3 attempts to get through.

If you didn’t pass your exam on your first go or even you second go, please don’t be dishearten, I rationalized the experience as a part of the learning process. I used first attempt to identify the areas I need strengthening and make sure that I put more effort to those. Once you have prepared well to cover your blind spots, you shouldn’t have any issues passing the retake.

What do I need to cover?

In my opinion this exam have left very few stones un-turned technically speaking. The materials covered by this certification are far and wide. For certain areas such as some of the most commonly used policies, it dives quite deep into the details. It is expected that you have a decent level of understanding and experience for the topics listed in the official certification page . I recommend that you come back to this page at least a few times during the preparation process to ensure you are on the right track and eventually covering all the topics listed before you take the exam.

Where do I start?

My journey started with videos listed in the official certification page:

https://academy.apigee.com/index.php/courses/elearning/fundamentals-restful-api-design

https://academy.apigee.com/index.php/courses/elearning/foundation_training

https://academy.apigee.com/index.php/courses/elearning/Edge_developer_bootcamp

While I found these videos useful for the most part, I rarely revisit these for when I was doing the preparation for the retake as I found some of the video sessions are a bit too long and difficult to extract the information I needed quickly. For example, if I needed to look at how to use a specific type of policy, I felt more comfortable jumping straight to Apigee’s Official Reference Documents site or watch the 4 minute videos for developers. I highly recommend that you get familiar with the structure of the document website and the subjects of those 4 minute videos. In hindsight, I think I would have learned much quicker if I used these resources sooner and more often.

What are of the areas that I need extra focus on?

Below are the key topics that I were focusing on for the majority of the time that I spent on study:

• To understand and implement all the different types of policies. For that I’ve use those Apigee policy references heavily. I also found that the 4 minute videos for developers tremendously helpful when I needed a quick reference. Those videos are truly short and sweet.
• Understanding the security aspects of API proxy development such as OAuth2.0 is a must. You will need to have a solid understanding of various grant types and types security policies. For those who do not have much experience in Oauth2.0, this could be the most difficult topic for you to grasp. Make sure that you spend proper amount of time to understand the theory as well as acquiring the necessary practical experience to understand this topic properly.

• You should have proper amount of understanding and experience with API BaaS. I’ve gained most of my BaaS understanding via the Apigee BaaS documentation. I have spent much of my time working through practical examples to remember the details.

• How it all fit together: You will need to understand various state of proxy flow and some of it’s commonly associated flow variables.

Please note that those were my focuses; your focus might be different depending on your expertise and past experience.

I spent roughly half my time reading and viewing videos, the other half implementing and experimenting with proxies. I would consider my memory to be good but not excellent so I was accustomed to this approach. The way you would split your time depending on your attributes and experiences.

How do I book my certification exam?

I booked the exam via the Apigee certification registration page , I paid ($100 USD) for the first exam but for the second time I used a voucher that were given to us as a part partnership program that our company had with Apigee. It’s worthwhile to check with your company to see such partnership program exist before booking your certificate test.

When you are booking your test, you have the option of taking the exam in an onsite proctored in an approved test center or and online proctored test at home or office. My first attempt was at a test center and my second attempt was in my office.

Where should I take my test?

Since I did my test in both settings, here are the pros and cons of each in my opinion:

Onsite proctored - Test Centre

Pros:

• Don’t have to prepare a computer for your exam
• Don’t need prepare for the physical testing space

Cons

• Doing the test in an unfamiliar space or the system.
• You will need to travel to and from the test center
• You will need to have an Id presented to the test center admin
• The system performance or internet speed is unknown ( In my case, the loading time for each of the question was at least 2 seconds more than when I did it the online proctored on my laptop! When multiplied that by 125 questions, I worked out that I lost a few very important minutes of valuable time! )

Online proctored – Office/Home

Pros:

• You will be in a familiar environment
• You know your computer and your Internet speed (If you do it at home or office, ensure you have good consistent Internet. Use an Ethernet cable if you can. If you are using Wi-Fi, ensure that you have a good stable signal)

Cons:

• You will need to have a camera and mic on your PC or laptop
• Install programs and follow instructions to setup your machine in advance.
• Organizing the physical test space (Could be difficult in a noisy and busy office/home)
• Dealing with the uncertain that you might not have prepared your PC and test space well enough to do the exam in time.

Out of the two options of taking the certification exam, I found that doing the Online proctored test at my office was a better experience due to faster test loading speed and without the need to travel to and from the test center. However if you are planning to do it in your office or home, you must make sure that you have your laptop/pc ready well in advance by following the setup instructions. You must also need locate a quite room or meeting room and schedule it in advance to ensure you are not disturbed while you sitting for the exam. For my exam session in office, I created a “Please do not disturb, exam in progress” sign and stick it in front of the door. The reason is that the program running on your computer will continuously monitor the noise level. So if it detected that you are being disturbed or if the surrounding is too noisy, it might stop you from proceeding further with the test.

Since both options have its pros and cons, where to best sit for your exam will be completely dependent of you and your circumstances.

Time for the test! What do I expect and what do I need to be aware of?

The test is an onsite/online proctored exam consists of 125 questions. The pass mark minimum is 70%.

All the questions are multiple-choice questions (usually 4 to 6 options) that are usually asked in the following styles:

• Please select ONE correct answer.
• Select ALL the correct answers that apply.
• Please select ONE answer that does not applies.
• Select All answers that do not apply.

You will be given 2 hours in total to complete this test. As a rough guide, you will need stay ahead the 1 minute per answer from the beginning and accumulating the lead as you go along. By the time you reaching the 1-hour mark, you should ideally be up to at least question 70 to be comfortably ahead.

You should also allow few minutes as a toilet break time since its a long session. In my opinion, the exam does get progressively more difficult so make sure you keep a close track of the time and don’t spend too much time in any one question. Unless you are close to the end and have a comfortable amount of time left.

For questions that you are not sure about, you’ll be given to chance to correct or answer questions at the end. However, from my experience it was very difficult to locate those questions as you are only given the question number as the name of anchor link and not actual question. Hence, I recommend that if you are not sure about a particular question, take your best guess and answer it anyway. You should mentally note (pen and paper are not allowed) down the question number and only try to locate and review it when you have extra time at the end.

Once you have submitted your exam you will get a score (70% to pass) and an indication that you have either pass or fail the exam. You will also receive a score summery breakdown by topics/areas to show you the areas that you did well and areas that you need to improve on.

If you have passed your exam, congratulations! You’ve studied hard and you deserved it.

If you failed -like the majority before you- please don’t be discouraged, you should see the failure as apart of the process to success. As soon as you have a chance, note down the specific areas that you think you didn’t do so well so when you are preparing for a retake, you can review those blind spots in greater detail so you won’t make the same mistake again.

I really hope that this post will be helpful to some of you. Please PM me if there are any mistakes. I will do my best to correct as soon as possible. Also, please feel free to suggest anything that I have missed.

I wish you the best of luck with your level 1 certification!

[anilsr]

Awesome @ivan , First of All, Congratulations on Getting Apigee L1 Certified !!!!!

Very glad to know the impact of 4MV4D Videos & the community article. We now have 100+ 4MV4D Videos & More in future.

Really love the way you have explained the end to end process. I am sure, It will add great value to the community & Helpful for someone who will be planning to take same.

Thank you for the great post & Sharing same with community.

[udayakaky]

Its a great post. If you have worked out on the BaaS and OAuth2.0 examples. it will be a good idea to check in into github or post them as attachments for reference.

[ivanzcai]

Hi @Anil Sagar, Thank you for your positive feedback. When I needed to refresh my understanding of a certain subject, the first place I would go are the videos. Can't thank you and the rest of team enough for making them available to us all!

[ivanzcai]

Thanks for the suggestion @Udaya Kaky! I will post it as soon I have it organised and properly documented.

[stephen-soosaim]

Congratulations @ivan for your apigee level 1 certificate cleared.

Awesome way you have explained the end to end process and it would be really helpful who is going take exam like me.

I would like to know more details on retake exam, if possible provide more details about the question pattern will be repeating same questions for retake exam or different setup of questions?

[ivanzcai]

The subjects/areas and amount of coverage for the retest are similar to the first time in my experience. If you are able to strengthen the areas that you are weak on and maintain the understanding of the areas that you are strong on you should be doing ok.