Snowflake Partners

Tips to pass Snowflake SnowPro Core certification

Hi! I am Vineeth, an Associate Software Engineer working at Accenture since September 2024. I have passed the Snowflake SnowPro core certification on November 1st 2025 with 920 points. I have prepared for this certification for around a month, and in today’s article, I would like to give some tips on how to pass it. Although the certification recommends people with at least 6 months of experience on Snowflake, you actually don’t need anything. Okay! So lets get started.

The Mindset

Let me clear some questions that might popup in your mind. First “Is the certification easy?” And the answer to that question would depend upon the kind of mindset you have. Let me explain what do I mean by that. If you are the kind of guy who just need to complete it for whatever reason without any real passion for learning, then it’s super hard for you unless you have some extraordinary talent for cramming stuff. But if you are like me who enjoys learning every bit of whatever you are reading and immerse in it, then it's a piece of cake for you. This exam is quite different from the other exams like Azure or AWS or GCP related certifications. Second “How much time do I need to spend?” Well if you ask me, then around 3 weeks to 1 month would be sufficient especially if you are like me with a mediocre talent. But if you are someone who is bad at remembering things…then I suggest taking sufficient amount of time like 3 to 4 months where you can prepare short notes and consistently look at it every day. Third “There is just so much Information…How do I complete it?” To be honest, I don't have an answer to that. It is true that there is an ocean of information in the docs. But hey, you don’t have to prepare all of that though. Our goal is to pass, not mastering it, and you definitely are a fool if you want to take a look at everything. I will provide some topics that are important to understand and might end up coming the most in the exam. Fourth “I failed on the first attempt and am feeling depressed….Any suggestions for me?” There is a quote from the character Zack Lee in the Manhwa Questism and it goes like “So what if you lose? You can just win next time. Believe in yourself and the light will reach you one day”.

Important Topics

These were some topics that I found the most in my exam and in general considered as important:

1. Snowflake’s layers
2. Snowflake Editions
3. Object Hierarchy and their theory (like tables, views, UDFs, and their types etc.)
4. Micro partitions
5. Data types (unstructured, structured, and semi-structured) and functions
6. Data clustering
7. Snowflake Stages
8. Data Loading and COPY INTO <table> command
9. Data Unloading and COPY INTO <location> command
10. Cache and their types
11. Virtual Warehouses and their types
12. Access Control
13. Roles
14. Privileges
15. Data Governance
16. Security principles like MFA, SSO, Federated and key-pair authentication
17. Information Schema and Account Usage Schema
18. Query Acceleration Service
19. Query Profile, History and Explain plan
20. Estimation functions like HLL etc. and sampling
21. Time travel and Fail-safe
22. Cloning
23. Data sharing

Resources

I completed the Level Up concepts first to get an idea. Next I prepared most of the theory using official documentation and you can do so by searching the topic name. Try to understand each sentence whatever you are reading. The docs were very neatly written, and that’s what made me addicted to Snowflake in the first place. The official study guide gives information about the syllabus for the exam which you can use to learn (Domain 1 is very important). You can also refer my GitHub repository to know the important points but not every topic is present since my exam date approached faster than expected. The most important point to discuss now is about the practice. I used my employer material for practicing questions but of course I can’t release it in the public. I believe that Exam Topics website can be referred as it sort of has questions just like the real exam would have. Use AI tools like DeepSeek to learn concepts if you don’t understand. You can use NotebookLM to prepare notes for yourself which can be helpful for revision. Optionally, you can create a free Snowflake trail account to explore how the UI looks like and maybe do a little bit of coding to get the idea of the SQL syntax.

Final Words

Be consistent. Be confident. All The Best!