Guide
How hard is the W3Schools Python certification exam?
Short answer
Moderate. The W3Schools Python exam is adaptive, about 60 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes, and you pass at 40% (Intermediate). Reaching Professional (90%) is hard. The questions follow the W3Schools Python tutorial closely, so if you can do the tutorial exercises without looking, you will pass. You get three attempts.
The format
Online, multiple choice and adaptive: about 60 questions in 60 minutes. Three attempts are included. 40% passes (Intermediate), 75% is Advanced and 90% is Professional. There is no deadline for taking the exam and the certificate never expires. Adaptive means the next question depends on how you answered the last one: get questions right and they get harder, which is how the exam places you at a level.
What is on it
The exam follows the W3Schools Python tutorial. Expect questions on:
- Syntax, variables, data types and casting
- Strings and string methods, f-strings, slicing
- Lists, tuples, sets and dictionaries, and what each one allows
- If, while and for, with break, continue and else
- Functions, arguments, *args and **kwargs, lambda, scope
- Classes, objects, inheritance, __init__ and self
- Modules, dates, math, JSON, regular expressions
- Try, except, finally and raising exceptions
- File handling: open, read, write, delete
- Reading short code snippets and picking the output
Many questions are "what does this print?". You will need to trace code in your head, so practise reading, not just writing.
How people fail
- Running out of time. Sixty questions in sixty minutes is one per minute. Do not get stuck; mark a guess and move on.
- Confusing list, tuple and set behaviour (mutability, duplicates, ordering).
- Scope and default argument questions.
- Off-by-one errors in slicing and range().
A one-week plan
- Days 1 to 4: work through the tutorial and do every Try it Yourself exercise and every chapter quiz without looking at the answers first.
- Day 5: do the Python exercises and quiz on w3schools.com twice.
- Day 6: write ten small programs from memory (FizzBuzz, word count, a class with inheritance, file read and write, a dictionary lookup).
- Day 7: take attempt one. Use attempt two and three to move up a level if you want to.
If you want the course too
The Python Certification Course is $95 and includes the exam and certificate, with lessons, quizzes and exercises in the same order as the exam. If you already know Python, the exam alone is $95.
