If you’re thinking about passing the SnowPro, here’s a guide to help you prepare, study effectively, and pass the exam, along with my personal insights on my experience.
Why Get SnowPro Core Certified?
The SnowPro Core Certification validates your ability to:
- Understand Snowflake’s architecture and features.
- Optimize data storage and compute usage.
- Build secure, high-performance, and scalable data solutions.
It’s ideal for data professionals aiming to showcase expertise in Snowflake, one of the leading cloud data platform.
Understanding the Exam Format
The SnowPro Core exam consists of:
- Number of Questions: 100 multiple-choice and multiple-select questions.
- Duration: 115 minutes.
- Closed Book
- Passing Score: 750 out of 1,000 points.
- Cost: $175 (without taxes).
- Domains Covered:
- Snowflake Overview and Architecture.
- Account and Security Management.
- Virtual Warehouses.
- Data Movement, Loading, and Transformation.
- Performance Optimization.
- Data Sharing and Connectivity
My Preparation Experience
I started revising for the SnowPro Core about a month before my exam, and while I think that timeframe was enough, I recommend being strategic about your preparation. The exam requires memorizing a lot of Snowflake documentation, and it can feel overwhelming at first. Everyone learns differently, but here’s what worked for me:
1. Hands-On Workshops
Snowflake’s hands-on workshops are an amazing starting point. They let you dive straight into the platform, showing you the concrete features that make Snowflake powerful. For me, this was essential because it motivated me to explore the documentation and tackle the dry, detailed material later. I find it hard to understand how something works without first understanding why I need it.
2. The Documentation is the only source of truth
The Snowflake documentation became my go-to resource and should become yours too. It’s extremely well-organized, detailed, and covers everything you need to know for the exam. No matter how much external material you use, the documentation is the ultimate source of truth.
3. Practice Exams
Mock exams are critical for preparing effectively. The official Snowflake mock exam costs $50 and provides 100 practice questions. At 50p a question I would say this is far from economical. Instead, I recommend purchasing a third-party mock exam pack (26 tests plus a cheat sheet) from SkillCertPro for $19. While some questions were outdated and a few repeated across tests, the overall value was fantastic. These helped me get used to the exam format and unable me to test my knowledge and identify my weak points.
The Actual Exam
On exam day, I found the SnowPro Core Certification exam harder than expected. Despite all my preparation, I was surprised by many questions and felt unsure about a lot of the answers I gave.
Here’s where the difficulty lies:
- Question Complexity: The challenge isn’t just about knowing Snowflake but also understanding the nuances in the questions themselves.
- Documentation Details: You’ll need to recall specifics from the Snowflake documentation, especially around permissions, SQL commands and parameters, and snowflake objects.
That said, time management was not an issue at all. I was able to answer all the questions with enough time left to review all of them.
After the Exam
Once you pass the exam, you’ll receive a certification score report and badge to showcase your accomplishment.
