I just took -- and passed -- the Acquia Certification Exam

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darrylri's picture

I am at DrupalCon Austin, and on Wednesday, I noticed a room off to the side of the hubbub with a sign out front that read "Acquia Certification". I had heard about the program and had a certain amount of trepidation about it. Being a mostly homegrown industry, it can be difficult to have a feel for how sharp your skills are in comparison to others around you. And, especially for a freelancer like myself, plunking down $250 for a test that few have taken and no one seems willing to talk about in great detail is more than a bit of a risk.

OTOH, with Dries mentioning in his keynote that D8 would not likely release before the middle of next year, and the inevitable delay of contrib catching up to it for a further 6-9 months, a D7 certificate probably still has some legs.

I looked in and had a nice chat with Peter Manijak, who runs the program. He mentioned that they were offering a special deal at the 'con: if you don't pass, you get a voucher for a free retake within 90 days. That put my mind at ease and I signed up for it. After the test, I mentioned this to Peter, and he said that he had heard the same from many others; maybe they will add this to the package.

They had 6 or 8 laptops set up for the exam, and there was basically no waiting. I signed up online and Peter sat me down in front one of them immediately. At this point, about 11am on Thursday, he said they had had 23 people take the test and he thought he'd get another 10. For something that wasn't advertised -- I never saw it in the program or anywhere else -- that's not bad.

I don't mind saying that the test was pretty intense. I finished the last of the 60 questions with 2 minutes left of the allotted 90. There's a timer that shows and I was watchful of not falling off the necessary pace of answering each question within 1.5 minutes.

Immediately after submitting the test, I got my results. Results... but no specifics about particular questions I wrestled with. Just how I did in the 4 broad categories they lay out and an overall score. While I can tell you what I got, the only thing that Acquia will verify to others is whether you passed or failed. A passing score is 65%.

For the record, I got:

Fundamental Web Development Concepts: 100%
Site Building: 87%
Front End Development (Theming): 57%
Back End Development (Coding): 90%
Overall: 83%
Result: Pass

As a site builder and back end developer, the results certainly match my own perceived strengths and weaknesses.

I would say that the exam was pretty tough and pretty fair. I will say that, in my opinion, a top front end developer who had not otherwise done work site building and at least finding things in the code, probably would not pass this exam. Front end development is a critical specialty, but the specifics of that task are diluted by the other areas that the test tries to cover. I think I heard Peter say on a DrupalEasy podcast that they were considering more specialized tests, and in at least this particular case, I think it is warranted.

There were very few questions that I answered immediately and without a second thought. And I would also agree with what I've read in that this is a test that would be very difficult to cram for. Obviously, it covers a broad swath of technologies and how they interact. The best way to study for the exam is to build some real world websites with Drupal, and thereby get to grips with common issues and problems encountered in building sites with Drupal. The people who wrote the test questions are familiar with these and you need to be as well.

The questions are not asked in groups, so it seems a bit scattershot as you progress through the test. You can go back and forth through the test and view an overview page to see what's left. You can also mark questions you know you want to go back and review.

I'm sure by now you are dying to know about the questions they asked. They are scenario based and the multiple choice answers are detailed. You have to read them closely to tease out the specifics of the answer. Sometimes this allows you to eliminate one or more of the answers because you know that a function name or a UI element is wrong. But surprisingly often, the wrong answers are valid, but not the best ideas. This is why you need to have built sites with Drupal, in order to understand what are the best practices and why.

The questions and answers are pretty low level. You will see snippets of PHP, CSS, Javascript and HTML. For front end questions, you will need to know about tipple-phips and how Phptemplate operates. For back end questions, you will need to know about hooks, specific hooks and how/when/why to use them, and some common data structure items. Site building questions require you to know the admin interface pretty well and have a good idea of how to put the pieces -- content types, fields, taxonomy and more -- together to build a site.

The only contrib module that my exam included was Views, which I think is pretty fair. I can't recall building a site that didn't use Views, but I could say that about several other contrib modules, too.

None of the questions struck me as a trick question. They seemed to be drawn from real world experience and represented valid issues that front end/back end/site builder will face on a daily basis while working with Drupal.

The bottom line is this: if you are a successful and reasonably experienced Drupalero, I think you will pass the exam. And while it isn't a trivial exercise, I think you'll find a lot of the questions touch on familiar issues you have had to deal with, so you will know what the right answer is.

Comments

Great review of the exam. Of

Alexander Allen's picture

Great review of the exam. Of all of this I can say with confidence that the exam is more than fair. On what potential hard parts I found I would say that there where none in particular, however, because the exam is mostly scenario-based, most of the questions will take a decent time to read and answer - about 1-2 minutes each on average. The most difficult part of the exam is actually the time that you have to read and answer each question correctly. So in order to pass the exam, apart from being an experienced Drupalista, you will need to be able to come up with answers as fast as you can. If you take more than 2 minutes on an answer too many times, you'll be scrambling at the end to finish them all. 90 minutes seem a lot, but when you take in consideration that it's 60 of them questions, it's not. Overall I found the exam intensive yet fair and rewarding. I would definitely recommend other experienced Drupal developers to take it. As for studying guide, the default links that are posted in the exam blueprint are more than helpful as well - I'd recommend carefully going over these as well, especially the Drupal back-end and front-end ones.

I also just sat and completed

welly's picture

I also just sat and completed the test (75%). I'd agree with your review. I don't think there were any trick questions but there were some tricky questions that you needed to read a few times to fully understand. It was a good overall of Drupal development although as you rightly said, a front end developer who does little back end development would definitely struggle.

What I did find was a number of the questions related to particular ways of developing and site building with Drupal that while is core Drupal functionality, I'm not sure would really be used in practice for sites of a reasonable complexity. Of course, a competent Drupal developer should know but as I tend to use modules such as Bean and Context, a number of the Block related/site building questions had me scratching my head a little bit.

Overall, I think it's a fair exam. I managed to answer all the questions within an hour but went back over my answers for the last half hour.

Oh, and just to add to my comment, I think a reasonable bit of study is required - particularly on hooks - and had I done a bit more revision than the 15 minutes before I sat the test, I think my results might have been a little better but happy enough with 75%.

Any E-Books to prepare for Exam

maq.said's picture

Any E-Books to prepare for Exam

Yes. Please share

venkatesha.k12's picture

Yes. Please share any useful details if anyone has.
As a fresher with 1 and half year experience i want to clear this exam.

Please guide.

Steps to Write Drupal Certification

maq.said's picture

Hi,

I am into Drupal for more than 1 year now and keen to write certifications.

Please let me know steps to achieve it.

Acquia site builder exam

sanjaykaronjiya's picture

Is there any negative marking in exam?

Drupal Exam Tutorial

bahjat-khaddag's picture

Dears,

I am not finding a good material to study for drupal exams. I tried to search for online courses but I was not able to find a proper materials. Can anyone support please

Spammers on this thread

loopduplicate's picture

How the heck do we get all these spammers/scammers blocked? This is getting really annoying on this thread, isn't it?

What is 'tipple-phips'?

nicole.harnish's picture

I cannot find anything about 'tipple-phips'... what is it? Does anyone have any references for it?

Thanks!

Hi Nicole, try tpl.php.

pferlito's picture

Hi Nicole, try tpl.php.

Ohhhh...

nicole.harnish's picture

Ohhhh... lol I didn't realise that's what was meant by that. Thanks!

Gotcha...

nicole.harnish's picture

I see now :) Didn't realise some people called the extension that, lol thanks!

Agree with other posts

alanoakden's picture

I agree with other posts especially the first one. If you were a top Front End Developer and came into this exam having a few months of experience with Drupal you would badly fail the exam. This is very much a 'knowing how to do Drupal theme stuff off the top of your head' exam rather than an exam that asks questions about best practices with CSS, Images, SEO etc.

A lot of marks can be lost if you don't know about; writing safe Twig, if you don't know PHP syntax, the most popular Drupal modules for Images and breakpoint, and haven't done lots of preprocessing for themes in the past.

Also some questions were a bit odd. Like one asked about a media query breakpoint at 767px and what would display on tablet /desktop/ mobile etc....well it depends on the specific device! I understood the gist of what they were getting at, but it was a poor question.

Santa Cruz

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