Ace
Short answer: paste or upload your lecture notes into Gemini and ask it to create a quiz, then answer each question before you look at the feedback. Use Guided Learning when you do not understand a topic yet, quizzes and flashcards when you need to practise recall, and Gemini's built-in practice tests if you are sitting the SAT or JEE Main. Ask it to stick to your material and keep a list of what you miss for a re-test in a few days.
Gemini's study tools, and when to use each
In February 2026 Google listed the Gemini features it recommends to students (Google, 2026). The ones that matter for exam practice:
- Guided Learning walks you through a hard concept step by step and asks questions along the way to check you understood. Use it early, when a topic is still confusing.
- Custom quizzes. Paste your lecture notes and ask Gemini to create a quiz. Use it once you understand the topic and need to practise remembering it.
- Study guides and flashcards organise your notes into a guide or a deck. Useful, as long as you test yourself with the flashcards rather than just reading them.
- Full-length practice tests. Since January 2026, Gemini offers free SAT practice tests built with content from The Princeton Review; you start one by telling Gemini you want to take a practice SAT (Google Workspace Updates, 2026). Google has since added JEE Main.
Make a quiz from your own notes
Gemini's generic quizzes test the topic in general. Your exam tests your course. So give it your material and be specific:
"Here are my lecture notes for [module]. Create a quiz using ONLY these notes. Ask one question at a time, multiple choice with four options, and wait for my answer before telling me if I'm right. After each answer, quote the line from my notes that supports it. Cover the whole document, not just the start."
Then vary it:
- "Now give me questions where I type the answer, no options."
- "Give me a scenario question that makes me apply [rule] to a new case."
- "Shuffle the steps of [process] and ask me to put them in order."
Why this works: answering questions, even ones you get wrong, strengthens memory far more than rereading (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006; Kornell, Hays and Bjork, 2009).
Six tips that make the practice count
- Understand first, then drill. Guided Learning for the first pass; quizzes after that.
- Commit to an answer. Say or type it before you see the feedback, every time.
- Ask for exam difficulty. "Make these as hard as a final-year exam question" stops the quiz being too easy.
- Mark your confidence. A confident wrong answer is a misconception; flag it and come back to it.
- Keep the error log. At the end, ask Gemini for every question you missed with the correct answer and quote. Save it.
- Re-test on a later day. Paste the error log into a new chat a few days later and ask for new questions on the same ideas. Spacing reviews out makes them last (Cepeda et al., 2006). See our spaced repetition schedule for timings.
Watch out for
- Outside knowledge creeping in. If a question covers something not in your notes, say "only my notes" again.
- Confident mistakes. Check important answers against the quoted line. Our guide to checking AI answers shows how.
- Letting it solve your homework. A study of high-school students using GPT-4 found that open access helped during practice but left students worse off on the exam once it was taken away; a version that gave hints instead of answers largely avoided the harm (Bastani et al., 2025). The same logic applies to any chatbot.
If you want this kind of practice without prompting each time, Ace takes your PDF, slides or a YouTube lecture link, lets you choose the chapters, and writes questions from that material only, with the supporting sentence from your file under each answer. We compared Google's own study notebook with it in Ace vs NotebookLM.
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemini free for students?
The Gemini app has a free tier with the study features above. Google has also offered eligible college students a year of Google AI Pro at no cost; check the current offer in your country.
Can Gemini make a quiz from a PDF?
Yes. Upload the PDF and ask it to create a quiz from that document only.
What is the difference between Guided Learning and a quiz?
Guided Learning teaches a concept step by step with check-in questions. A quiz tests what you already know. Use the first to understand and the second to practise.
Are Gemini's practice SAT tests like the real thing?
They are full-length tests built with content from The Princeton Review, so they are a reasonable rehearsal. Still use official practice materials as well.
Sources
- Google. (2026, February 13). 5 ways Gemini can help students work smarter. blog.google
- Google Workspace Updates. (2026, January 23). Announcement of full-length SAT practice tests in the Gemini app.googleblog.com
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. PubMed
- Kornell, N., Hays, M. J., & Bjork, R. A. (2009). Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(4), 989–998. PubMed
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. PubMed
- Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakcı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(26). doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2422633122
