SnowPro Core Certification (COF-C02): My Reflection and Study Guide
2023-05-17Today I successfully passed the SnowPro Core Certification. I have written down my study approach, thoughts, and tips on the exam here, which should hopefully help some of you out who may be looking at taking this exam!
My Study Approach
I started off by going through Tom Bailey’s course on Udemy. I thought that his course was brilliant, as Tom’s clear explanations are accompanied by Visualisations that help you understand the concepts a lot easier. I spent a lot of time re-watching these videos to ensure that I fully grasped the topics.
Once I had gone through Tom’s course, I then moved on to free practice exams. I found that these were incredibly useful.
I don’t know how ExamTopics did it, but a decent amount of the practice questions were the exact same questions that appeared on my real exam. You will be able to access questions #1 - #310, but past that the rest of the questions require a paid account to access them (I only used the free questions).
Annoying side note with these practice tests is that they only display 10 questions per page, and you’ll be prompted to complete a CAPTCHA every 2-3 pages.
To really top off my understanding, I also went through these Udemy practice questions. You only really get 3 unique practice tests 😅, as the last 3 are just grouped by Snowflake subject areas, and contain questions that appear in the first 3 exams.
Despite that (and a few spelling mistakes on the questions), I was feeling confident to take on the exam after consistently scoring 90%+ on all of the practice tests.
Exam Tips
- 1st Pass: Go through each question and answer as many as you can. If you don't know the answer, flag it and move on to the next one. Keep going until you reach the end.
- 2nd Pass: Go through each of your flagged questions, and take time to think about the answer. If you still can't think of the answer, leave it flagged. Keep going until you have reached the end the flagged questions.
- 3rd Pass: Go through ALL questions, whether they have a flag or not. Take this time to verify that your answer is correct. Make adjustments if required. Repeat this until the timer on the exam ends.
- I was honestly surprised by the difficulty of this exam - prepare for technical questions that may not appear in your revision material
- Use up ALL of the exam time. Do not finish it early.
- Hands on experience is king. Make sure to follow along with the labs that most instructors include in their courses.
I usually encourage going through the exam in Three Passes:
Some other recommendations/tips:
Conclusion
Overall - this exam was honestly more tough than I initially expected. I was feeling pretty confident going into it, but I only just passed with a mark of 79% (75% is required to pass).
I spent around a month and a half preparing for this exam, spending an hour or so every night learning the content. I think this certification is worth studying for, however, don’t expect it to be a cakewalk!
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the exam, please feel free to get in touch via any of the contact methods above.
Good Luck!