Snowflake’s SnowPro Certification Preparation Guide — How to pass in 3 days
A guide and lens on how to pass the Snowflake SnowPro Certification with tips and notes
SnowPro Certification
Snowflake’s SnowPro Core Certification exam was just released in late 2019. The 2 hours, 100 questions exam tests an individual’s foundational and advance knowledge of Snowflake in both the implementation and migration, which covers all topics within the Snowflake documentation.
Back when the exam was quite new, they weren’t many resources out there on practice questions or any preparations guide other than the one from Official Snowflake and Snowflake University (Mindtickle).
Having left the exam preparation until the last few days, I only had 3 nights to study before the scheduled online proctored exam. I hope that this exam guide will give you all the information that you will need to pass the exam.
Exam Guide
Below are the cheat sheets that I have created, which covers all the topic that was asked in the exam (Credits to Snowflake for the diagrams).
Note: Since I work with Data Warehouse daily, I did not cover much on SQL definitions or Database object structures, review this on your own from the Snowflake Documentation.
Download PDF Copy here
Hands-on Material
I signed up for the free trial, which gave me $400 to use and an Enterprise edition of Snowflake. I did this tutorial which taught me everything I needed to know to pass the exam. Here is a tip, try to do all of that with SQL instead of using the Web UI (creating Databases, Named Stage, Warehouse, etc.).
Practise Questions
I have used the following resources to get practise questions for the exam, some of them ended up being in the actual exam, so I advise you to go through it all, won’t take too long and they are all free!
Quizlet
https://quizlet.com/380510774/snowflake-certification-flash-cards
This one took the longest to complete since there are over 200 questions with many questions similar to the actual exam. Just be careful as there are some answers which are a little outdated.
Snowflake University
https://www.snowflakeuniversity.mindtickle.com
I would advise doing all the questions from the Level Up series (skim through some of the videos if you wish) and the actual Sample Exam (30 questions). Some of the questions are on the real exam.
My thoughts on the exam.
The online proctored exam was an interesting one. I felt quite comfortable sitting in my own home (and natural habitat) while doing the exam. However, there were a few problems that I faced along with how the invigilator had to stop me many times (to do with external video quality and position) which added 30mins to the exam, but it was fine.
I found the exam to be quite different from some of the other exams that I sat, such as AWS CASA. The questions were straightforward to read and did not have any scenario-based questions; rather, it was mainly theoretical knowledge of Snowflake, so you didn’t really need much hands-on experience. The only tough part was the pressure of getting over 80% since exams have never been my friend.
Exam tips
My biggest exam tip would be, ‘don’t overthink’, if you’re 80% certain, then pick it and move. Now, if you are stuck with a question, mark it, and come back later. In most cases, some other future questions will give you the answer that question, or you’ll have a fresher mind when you come back.
Additional Resources
Your best friend is the Snowflake Documentation, the SnowPro brochure, and my Snowflake Article ;).
About Me
As a Consultant at Servian, I have been helping businesses build scalable cloud and data solutions in the area of Production AI/ML, Data Warehousing and Containers, and have a growing interests in DevOps. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn for a chat (let me know it’s from Medium) or to find out more on how we Servianites can help you with your cloud and data solutions.
