Magento certification cheat sheet revealed!

After a joint effort of 42 developers worldwide who took the Magento Certified Developer exam over the last 12 weeks, we bring you the ultimate cheat sheet for getting certified – with a 100% pass rate guaranteed!

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EDIT: This was, as most of you accurately guessed, an April Fools’ Day joke. Thanks to everyone who joined in with their comments and for keeping the joke alive for some extra hours last Sunday – it was a rather obvious one (after all, who would simply share a cheat sheet, right? :)), but we thought it would give you a couple of laughs. Happy certification, everyone!!!

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Here at Inchoo we have always taken pride in sharing our knowledge of Magento with the rest of the community, so this is only a continuation of a long-lasting tradition.

There’s been quite a few articles written on the whole certification process, one of the most recent ones being Ben Marks of Blue Acorn sharing his thoughts on how to become certified – but this – this is something completely different!

We have 4 certified developers today (haven’t used the cheat sheet ourselves yet), and with the results of our recent investigation (and with special thanks to all of you guys out there who were flunking the tests only to get us this invaluable info), there’s much more to come from us, and hopefully from all of you, our loyal readers and followers.

Have you just started poking around Magento but find it a bit overwhelming to pass the exam?

Or are you a Magento Solution Partner with little to none dedicated Magento developers, paying for your partner status simply because you can and outsourcing the development to other companies? You were probably worried when Magento announced you’ll need to have certified developers on board – well, worry no more – with our ultimate cheat sheet you can have your community managers pass the exam in their first try! Add a couple more people to the mix and you’re golden!

Discovering the patterns

This cheat sheet was prepared after we gathered the details about questions from 42 exams taken worldwide (it took quite an effort getting all these developers sneak in those mini cameras to capture the questions). Not in our wildest dreams did we expect to find clear answer patterns.

You can imagine our surprise when our consulting partner, a tenured professor at the University of Osijek’s Department of Mathematics, told us that to a math-trained eye the answer patterns were so obvious it would take a high-school graduate several hours to understand them and pass this exam.

The exam apparently uses one of the most common math concepts – prime numbers – as the pattern to answering the questions correctly.

How come this was missed by the Magento Certification Board, you may ask? Well, call us conspiracy theorists if you will, but this can’t be a pure coincidence, so we somehow feel this was done on purpose, to allow the developers around their companies (who have the inside info) to pass the certification with flying colors.

Well, guys – the jig is up! Now everyone can become a Magento Certified Developer, and here’s how:

What do you need to pass the exam?

1. Exam voucher number

You have to purchase a voucher to be able to register for the exam, so once you make the purchase, you will get what appears to be a randomly generated voucher number, but what it actually represents is the first clue, or the key to solving the test, even if you have virtually no prior Magento experience.

The last digit on the voucher number is the one that’s going to help you pass as it will correspond to the actual exam you’ll be solving. It contains the hidden answer to the first exam question and after that it’s all a smooth ride. It’s all explained in detail in the actual cheat sheet below.

2. Prime numbers

Well, you probably remember all about the prime numbers from your math class, right? I thought so – in a nutshell, a prime number is the one that only has two divisors – number 1 and itself – so, prime numbers are 2,3,5,7,11,13,… the list goes on indefinitely (but you’ll only need first seven primes to pass the exam).

And that’s all the info you need – so, how does this actually help? Using your unique voucher number and primes with a little help from the cheat sheet, you can get all the answers right.

The cheat sheet revealed

So, without further ado, the cheat sheet together with instructions can be downloaded right here.

Download the Magento Certified Developer exam cheat sheet!

We actually gave this cheat sheet to one of the developers who initially flunked the test, and she was happy to share her thoughts for this article:

“Guys – this is incredible! Works like a charm! Ok, there was quite a bit of counting involved, but it also helps you not to look suspicious finishing the test too quickly. I deliberately answered several questions wrong and passed with a stunning 64/70 score! Thanks a lot for the cheat sheet, and I can only hope more people will benefit from this! Love Magento, love the community!”

April Første, Magento Certified Developer (Denmark)

So, there you go – what are you waiting for? Get Magento certified! And yes, you’re welcome! 🙂