These certification guides are fairly outdated. (Some of them were written more than 8 years ago). Look out for official Acquia Certification Study Guides on Acquia website for the latest and greatest.

Posted 10 years 8 months ago.

I took my Acquia Certification exam this weekend. Cleared it with 75%. Though I am taking huge pride in probably being the first from India to have cleared/taken the certification, I acknowledge that my score is a bit embarrassing. I attribute the low score to my poor theming and JS skills which I should be working on this year.

The examination is beautifully crafted. The questions are mostly real-world situations that you would have “been there done that” if you have a good experience with building Drupal Sites.

The Exam:

I chose to take the exam online from my home rather than at the Kryterion Center. You will be required to install a software that allows a proctor to monitor you as you take your exam. Additionally the software also prevents copy-paste, and prohibits you from opening any other software or web pages during the examination.

Preparation:

Having been on a full-time onsite assignment through the week, I had little time to prepare. But having taken the exam now and having read about it a lot in the past few days, this is a small attempt at curating the best available resources to help anyone taking the Acquia Drupal Certification.

Credits:

I built the below list on top of Webchick’s Acquia Certification Study Guide. All credits to her for the original work. I am trying to keep the list more specific by taking out the obvious ones like php.net, api.jquery.com and adding more specific resources wherever applicable.

Trivial things:

  • Webcam: If you are taking the exam online, you are allowed to use the webcam on your laptop. But do consider having an external USB webcam that you could place on your table such that changing the angle of your laptop monitor would not disturb the proctor monitoring you and you will be at more liberty to recline your laptop monitor to an angle that best suits you.

  • Have things handy : The exam is for 90 mins and you can not go out of view of the webcam during this period. So keep things like water handy. You could also consider taking a leak before the start of the exam

  • Testing Center vs Online Proctoring : If you have a toddler around in your house, it will never be a good idea to take the exam from home. Kryterion seems to have a huge network of centers from where you can take the examination. Check them out - http://www.kryteriononline.com/host_locations/

Some more pointers heard from other takers of the exam:

  • Do not over-think. The more experienced you are, the more likely are you to dig deeper into the question and disobey your instinct. Some questions have tricky answers among the options. Though your instinct suggests you the correct answer initially, you might be tempted to choose a similar-looking incorrect one. So, go with your instincts. Except for a few such questions, most others are fair question and do not try to confuse you and have distinct and clear options.

  • Leave the longer ones to the last. A few questions are too long to read. You can make them out by the length of text in the question and the options. Mark them for Review and come back to them at the end of the examination if you have time.

On the whole, the exam is well-crafted and you will enjoy taking the exam if you always loved solving problems with Drupal and building stuff on Drupal.

Feel free to suggest in comments below if you have know any good resources that you think should be part of the above list.

Submitted by tanay on Mon, 03/31/2014 - 01:37