How to use AI to study for an exam without it doing the studying

The trap: practice that looks like learning

In a field trial with nearly 1,000 high school maths students (Bastani and others, PNAS, 2025, peer reviewed), students who practised with a plain chatbot scored 48% higher in practice than students with no AI. On the exam, with the chatbot gone, they scored 17% lower than those students. A tutor version of the same AI, set up to give hints and not answers, largely avoided the drop. The full study is here.

School records from 26,811 students tell a similar story (Stromberg and others, 2026, a working paper, observational, not peer reviewed). Homework scores went up after AI arrived and monthly exam scores went down. Students who kept spending real time on their homework had only small losses.

The lesson for revision: a high score with the AI open tells you what you and the AI can do together. The exam asks what you can do alone.

The routine

1. Answer from memory first

   Take one past question or one topic. Close the chat and your notes. Write your answer, or everything you remember, for five minutes. Gaps and wrong turns are the point: they show you what to revise.

2. Ask the AI to mark it, not to answer it

   Paste the question and your answer, then add: "Check my thinking: tell me what I got right, then what I missed." For maths, ask it to find the first step where you went wrong and stop there, so you can redo the rest.

3. Have it quiz you

   Ask: "Quiz me on this topic, one question at a time. Wait for my answer before the next one. Do not give the answer until I have tried." Short questions, answered from memory, are closer to an exam than reading a summary.

4. Explain it back

   Close the chat. Write two or three sentences on the topic as if to a classmate. Anything you cannot explain goes on tomorrow's list.

5. Do the last paper with no AI

   In the final week, sit at least one full past paper under timed conditions with nothing open. Mark it from the official mark scheme if there is one. This is the only practice score you should trust.

Three rules that keep it honest

• Do not ask for a summary of something you have not read. In seven experiments with 10,462 people (Melumad and Yun, PNAS Nexus, 2025, peer reviewed), learning a topic from an AI summary left people with shallower knowledge than finding it out through web search, even when the facts were the same. The topics were everyday ones, not school subjects, but the direction is worth knowing.
• Check the AI against your course. A chatbot can be wrong and still sound sure. Your syllabus, textbook and mark scheme decide what earns marks. If the AI and your notes disagree, ask your teacher.
• Hints before answers. If you are stuck, say "one hint, not the answer". Take the answer only after a real try, and then explain it back.

Make the AI do this by default

You can save a standing instruction in your AI's settings so it asks for your attempt first in every chat. Ours for students includes this line:

I am a student. For homework and revision, help me understand well enough to do it alone in an exam. Do not write my assignments for me. Give feedback on what I write instead.

The coach setup page builds the full text and shows where to paste it. It is free. The think pad does the same from outside: write your attempt, tap your AI, and it carries your attempt with the question.

Use ChatGPT or Gemini for this. ChatGPT is for ages 13 and up, with a parent's permission if you are under 18. Claude is for adults only.

Questions