How to ace the Microsoft DP-100 Azure Data Scientist certification. What are the prerequisites? And is it worth it?
1. A good new after a long silence
Last evening I have cleared the Microsoft certification exam DP-100: Designing and Implementing a Data Science Solution on Azure. For who wondered what happened after I wrote my last post during a summer heat wave in Marseille, a few months later I got a new job in the renewable energy sector and moved to the now (February 2023) cold and humid Brussels. The AI community meanwhile got impacted like other tech tribes in US by massive layoffs. If that on one side made me feel even closer to the friends on the other side of the ocean, on the other proved once more how important is to develop transferable skills during your career. Studying for MS Azure certifications was a part of my upskilling during the last months. Here I summarize few lessons learnt.
2. DP-100: is it worth the money/effort?
It highly depends on your professional profile. I can compare that exam to a plumber certification in a specialized skill such as soldering. In other words:
- Are you starting your data science career? Then the answer is no. It would be much wiser then to get the basic skills with an academic course and then build up on that (Linkedin profile, Github portfolio etc.). That is the path I took years ago in France with Openclassrooms. How to start a DS career is a completely different topic which I cannot cover here.
- Have you got Python and Data Science basics under the belt? Have you got cloud experience already? Is your current employer using MS Azure? Then having this certification is a career boost. It may not guarantee you the next promotion or new better job but still it is worth the effort in terms of money and most of all study hours. That is not an easy exam and you must thoroughly prepare.
3. Study paths and tips
- The study paths: free vs. paid
You may be lucky, your company has an agreement with Microsoft and you can get the instructor led course for free. Check with your line manager if this is the case and negotiate three days of course. Employers may have budget and time for personnel training, and it is a good idea to use it. Instructors at Microsoft are really professional and helpful.
- How to prepare
If this is not the case and you are on a budget, the study material can be found here
It is a very good idea to follow the labs as well. You can create a MS account, get Azure subscription with 100$ bonus and start getting familiar with all the tools.
https://microsoftlearning.github.io/mslearn-dp100/
This will take you evenings and weekends. Best to avoid study marathons and be constant in your learning, as for any exam. No point learning code by hearth, but as you will progress you will get used to some libraries such as
ComputeTarget
ScriptRunConfig (important one)
Hyperparameterconfig
and to the syntax that you will use with Azure ML SDK.
Once you complete the labs and studied the material provided at the above link, best is to practice quizzes. A lot. PersonVue provides updated practice tests, best option as those are the closest to real exam questions. If you are really keen you can cheaply get those from Whizlabs on top. No point learning by heart the answers, but good to revise and try to get familiar with the exam format. For example, looking for the correction of a practice test question I had to read about the split data module. A question at the exam was on the same subject, even if different. And yes, you may also get unlucky with one question involving topics that are not in the syllabus or are barely mentioned. But that may have been referred in some of the practice quiz, and you may still get it. That is also why it is good to know Azure beforehand, not just hope to learn all in a single exam. In synthesis: practice, practice, practice. That is how you pass the exam.
- Pssst, I heard that there is a special cheat… (how NOT to prepare)
Not sure what you heard but it is best to avoid the “certified exam dumps”, “real updated questions” and so on. If you find some videos on YouTube claiming to share all exam question and answers, don’t think you will find them in the real exam. If you feel like (maybe you are traveling long distance), you can watch it as practice Q&A. The habit of trying to steal the tests before the exam is something that dates way before the internet, but at best it is useful to share some anecdotes with friends at the student bar. And teachers know well. If you got the dumps (even supposed they are not a plain fraud) today, it means that at Microsoft they had them way before and have already changed the exam questions. I write it again: understand the explanation after you answer a practice quiz question, DON’T learn answers by heart.
- Are there prerequisites for this exam?
A good idea is to have some knowledge of Azure already. That can be acquired with the AZ-900 (fundamentals), which is also good to have in general when you approach the Azure environment. But I would say that the entry level version of DP-100 is rather the AI-900, focused on ML/AI, which I had passed few months before. It is a good primer and it required me just one week of preparation.
4. A final note: the renewal
After you earn the certification, you will have to renew it every year. You can do up to six months before it expires, so please don’t wait for the last week. Set a note in your calendar if it can help.
