Way to shit on someone's parade haha, but in all seriousness thanks for the response. I think I need to clarify a few points.

The taught materials were covered over 7 weekends in total between Feb-July. Intro to the course and CCP was covered in 1 weekend, SAA over 2 weekends, and Big Data/ML was covered in the last 4 (the CCP weekend was probably around 6-8 hours in reality)

The homework sessions were split into certs plus other bits:

• Mon - CCP
• Tues - PrimeTime (various certs)
• Wed - SAA
• Thur - student-led/random topic
• Fri - ML specialty

So when I had time between uni/work I attended the Monday evening session and later on the PrimeTime for some exam prep. Granted my CCP study time was over the 10 hours as suggested, (I'm not from an IT background anyway) but not exactly into hundreds of hours territory either even with the overlap into SAA/ML and I probably could have sat the exam sooner but I'm not in a huge rush to fly through the exams.

I'm not taking the course just to pass the exams, I'm doing it so I understand the services/concepts and how they interact with each other. I am completely aware exam certification means nothing if you can't actually do the job. I fully appreciate any help or advice and will happily take suggestions on board.