the microsoft dp-100 experience

originally created on 2025-07-11

updated on 2025-07-11

tags: [ms-dp100-series]
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preface: this is the first series blog on my website. if a tag has "series" in it, that means that there are multiple blogs that are hidden under that tag. you can access the hidden blogs by clicking the tag in the blog list (bryanchan.org/blog/<tag>). for example, here is the tag for this series.

this summer, i had the opportunity to go to the insure+e program in normal, il. i made a blog about it here.

however, this was only part of my summer (most of june). now, im back at home and continuing to work on what we started. however, i need to do more if i want to get a job in this market. thus, i wanted certifications.

i looked online at dozens of applications (and applied to most of them), and...not gonna lie, i got rejected. a lot. however, what i also noticed is that a lot of data scientist jobs required knowledge in cloud computing. in particular, i saw a lot of aws and azure requirements (and a bit of gcp as well). so...i decided to prove that i knew this stuff. i have done my fair share of projects, but they are all incomplete and not published. so, whats the next best way to prove that i know this stuff? certifications.

aight, lets do this.

step 1: signing up

after some thinking, i decided to go with the microsoft dp-100 certification to start (as you can see in the title). "azure data scientist associate". not a bad title!

wow, it even has a fancy logo on it or something (source)

the first thing i did before anything else was sign up for a testing date. i am someone that tends to procrastinate a lot if i dont have a deadline, so i set one. my official testing date is august 12th, 2025. (note: i am using "is" because at the time of writing this, i have not taken the test yet).

the test fees were pretty intimidating, but i want to believe that it is worth it in the long run. the test costed approximately $91, and i decided to take it in person (i heard that taking it online was...quite annoying).

great! im signed up. now, i have to study.

step 2: study plan

so...im not really good at studying. that makes things hard...

first off, i looked at the self-paced learning path. microsoft seemed to estimate that it would take 18 hours to complete. i have a month, and i am completely unemployed and free (aside from working on the insure+e publication and polishing my website). so, i decided to contribute 2 hours a day to looking at this course.

after searching for valuable resources online (doomscrolling on reddit), i found a few other places to study.

i plan to document my entire study notebook in a blog series (finally using the tags for something useful hehe)

ill keep hyperlinking the sections as i go along, so you can check out blog by blog!

step 3: the study series

self-learning course module 1.1

step 4: taking the test

i have not taken the test yet, as it is set for august 12th. i will update this section and keep writing beyond here once i take the test! :)

also i really need to fix my website code. that will probably be my next blog (unless by some miracle i finish ragsec before my own website??)

thank you so much kc for checking up and improving my code