How exam readiness is calculated
Percentage correct answers the wrong question. Ninety questions about IAM and none about cost optimisation scores 92% and is not ready. This is what we do instead, written down so you can argue with it.
Two examples
- Answered
- 291
- Coverage
- 100%
- Recent
- 19/20
- Trend
- +9 pts
- Design Secure Architectures95%
- Design Resilient Architectures88%
- Design High-Performing Architectures82%
- Design Cost-Optimized ArchitecturesWeakest68%
You are strong across 2 of 4 domains. At 68% it is below your 85% target, and at 20% of the exam it is where marks move fastest. You got 7 of your last 10 right here. Complete 20 questions here before reassessing readiness.
- Answered
- 13
- Coverage
- 56%
- Recent
- 10/13
- Trend
- —
- Design Secure Architectures80%
- Design Resilient Architectures86%
- Design High-Performing ArchitecturesNot tested
- Design Cost-Optimized ArchitecturesNot tested
You have answered 13 questions, and 56% of the exam has enough evidence behind it to score. Least evidenced: Design High-Performing Architectures and Design Cost-Optimized Architectures. A readiness assessment spreads questions across every domain, favouring ones you have not seen.
In plain English
Six ideas. The detail and the exact figures are further down for anyone who wants to check them.
- Coverage
- Have you been tested on every part of the exam? A domain you have not touched counts against you, because the real exam will not skip it.
- Evidence
- How many questions stand behind each result? Three right answers is a good start, not proof. Until there is enough, we say so instead of showing a number.
- Difficulty
- Hard scenario questions tell us more than recall questions, so they count for more — in both directions.
- Recency
- What you can do now matters more than what you could do a month ago. Recent answers count most, and old ones fade.
- Consistency
- One great session is not readiness. Scores that hold up from session to session are.
- Blueprint weighting
- Each domain counts as much as the provider says it does in the real exam — no more, no less.
Why not just percentage correct
A single percentage misses four things that decide whether you are ready to book the exam.
- It ignores what the exam is made ofProviders publish domain weightings, and they are not equal. On SAA-C03, Design Secure Architectures is 30% of the exam and Cost Optimisation is 20%. A practice score that treats a gap in the first like a gap in the second is measuring the wrong exam.
- It ignores difficultyFifty recall questions answered correctly is not the same evidence as twenty multi-constraint scenarios, and a single number that cannot tell them apart will read high for the candidate who has only ever practised the easy ones.
- It ignores whenA candidate who spent last week lost and this week turned it around is closer to ready than an average across both says. Recency has to count, or the number cannot fall either.
- It ignores how little it knowsThree right answers in a domain is not 100%. It is barely tested, and a product that reports it as 100% is flattering somebody into booking an exam.
The five things that move it
Every figure here is read from the engine itself, so this page and the product cannot disagree about the method.
Correctness, weighted by difficulty
×1 · ×1.8 · ×2.8A multi-constraint scenario is worth nearly three times a recall question. The weights are 1, 1.8 and 2.8 for the three difficulty levels.
Recency
Half-life 20 attemptsAttempts decay with a half-life of 20 attempts — one good practice session. Evidence older than 90 days is discounted further for staleness, floored at 45%, because cloud exams move and a domain you practised before a blueprint revision is weaker evidence than the count suggests.
Evidence
No score below 35% confidenceEach domain's score is shrunk towards a neutral 50% in proportion to how little evidence stands behind it. Ten medium questions give roughly 60% confidence; thirty give roughly 78%. Confidence also rises with difficulty and falls as evidence ages, so thirty hard questions count for more than thirty easy ones. Answering a question you have seen before counts at 50% weight, so cycling the same few questions cannot manufacture evidence. Below 35% the domain is described rather than scored.
Blueprint coverage
Provider’s own weightsDomains are combined using the provider’s own published weights. A domain you have never practised contributes the neutral prior rather than being quietly left out of the average — because not having touched 20% of the exam is a fact about your readiness, not a gap in our data.
Consistency
At most −6 pointsScores that swing between sessions attract a penalty, capped at 6 points. A candidate whose sessions vary is slightly less ready than one whose do not; it is a nudge, not a verdict.
Time management is measured but not folded in. Most practice is untimed, so seconds per question is mostly noise. Where it does mean something — a full mock exam — it is reported on the results screen against the real exam’s own budget, rather than blended into a number that would then move for reasons you cannot see.
The five stages
The stage is what the product tells you, and it is stricter than the number. Every gate is listed here — there is no hidden adjustment.
- Getting started
No answered questions on this exam version.
- Building evidence
Some questions answered, but too little evidence across the blueprint to state a figure.
- Making progress
A readiness figure below 60%.
- Nearly ready
A figure of 60% or more — or 75% or more with something still holding you back.
- Ready
75% or more, with at least 90% of the blueprint evidenced, no weak domain and steady session scores.
Why a high number is not enough on its own. Ready needs at least 90% of the blueprint evidenced, no weak or untested domain, and consistency of at least 60%. A 90% built on three of four domains is Nearly ready — because the fourth is part of the exam nobody has looked at.
What it is not
The limits matter as much as the method. These are the claims readiness does not make.
- Not a probability of passing. We have no data linking this number to real exam outcomes and will not imply one until we do.
- Not the provider’s scoring model. AWS scales 100–1,000 and Microsoft asks for 700; neither is a percentage of questions answered correctly, and neither is comparable to this.
- Not a measure of ability. It is a summary of what you have demonstrated on this product, on these questions.
- Not an average. The marker on every domain bar is 85% — the level at which a domain stops being the thing holding you back — and readiness is a weighted, shrunk, recency-adjusted combination rather than the mean of those bars.
Questions people ask
What do the stages mean?
Getting started means no answers yet. Building evidence means some answers but not enough to state a figure. Making progress, Nearly ready and Ready describe a stated figure — and Ready also requires that almost all of the blueprint is evidenced, no domain is weak and your sessions are steady. A high number alone never makes you Ready.
Is readiness a probability of passing?
No, and we will not present it as one until there is evidence to support the claim. It is a summary of what you have demonstrated on this product, against the provider’s published blueprint. Nobody has published data linking a third-party practice score to real exam outcomes, and a number that implied otherwise would be the most consequential thing on the site to be wrong about.
Why is my readiness lower than my domain scores?
Because readiness accounts for two things a domain score does not: how much of the blueprint you have actually tested yourself on, and how consistent your sessions are. A candidate scoring 90% in three domains and nothing at all in the fourth has not demonstrated readiness for the exam, only for three quarters of it.
Why does it sometimes refuse to give me a number?
Because below a certain amount of evidence any number would be a guess dressed as a measurement. Under 30% overall confidence the product says what is missing instead — usually that a domain has not been touched.
Can my readiness go down?
Yes, and it should be able to. Recent attempts carry more weight than old ones, so a run of wrong answers moves it. Evidence also goes stale: a domain you last practised four months ago counts for less than one you practised last week, because cloud exams change.
Does getting easy questions right count the same as hard ones?
No. A multi-constraint scenario question carries nearly three times the weight of a recall question, because answering it correctly demonstrates nearly three times as much — and getting it wrong costs accordingly.