What will help him in the exam?

A “hints, not answers” mode and self-testing. In the PNAS study, plain chat boosted practice grades, but in the AI-free exam students did 17% worse. A tutor with hints almost removed that drop.

Which way of preparing works better?

The agent asks questions from her notes, she answers without prompts. Recalling without prompts beats rereading: the material sticks longer. And the agent collects mistakes for review.

What should she do with this line?

Remove it and honestly write: “I know the basics, taking a course”. Made-up experience is exposed by the first question and hurts trust more than an honest gap.

Which plan is stronger?

Pick 5 that fit and prepare a CV and interview for each. With 11,000 applications a minute, precision wins. Five strong, well-prepared applications give better odds than a hundred identical ones.

Study and career: a tutor and a recruiter

Lesson 11 of 22 in the course “AI Agents for Life”. Free, with animations and a quiz.

AI can help or hurt

In 2025 the journal PNAS published a study of nearly 1,000 high-school students solving maths problems. One group used a plain chat like ChatGPT during practice: grades rose 48%. But in an exam without AI, these students did 17% worse than those who never had the chat at all. Another group worked with an AI tutor that gave hints, not answers: +127% in practice, and almost no drop in the exam. The takeaway: same tool, but the result depends on how you use it.

Learn with AI, not instead of yourself

Why does a “finished answer” hurt? You get the result without the effort, and your brain remembers the effort. So a good study agent has four steps. First you try yourself, five minutes, mistakes and all. Then you show your working. The agent gives a hint, not the answer. And at the end you explain the topic back in your own words: if you can explain it, you get it. That’s the “AI tutor” from the study: the same models, but with the rule “don’t solve it for the student.” It’s easy to add to your mini-agent from lesson five.

Notes → a quiz

The most useful study trick with AI isn’t summarising, it’s testing yourself. Rereading notes feels nice, but recalling without a prompt works better: the material sticks longer. Paste your notes and ask for five questions, one at a time, with no answers. You answer, the agent corrects and explains. It collects your mistakes in a list, and tomorrow you review only those. That’s how Liza prepared for her economics exam: 15 minutes a day, and by the end of the week the whole course without cramming. It works in any assistant, even a free one.

11,000 applications a minute

Now careers. In June 2025 The New York Times reported that LinkedIn gets about 11,000 applications a minute, 45% more than a year earlier. Many are written with AI, and recruiters complain that résumés have become nearly identical. What does that mean for you? Anyone can now fire off a hundred identical “AI” applications, so it no longer works. The winner uses an agent differently: to hit the job precisely and prepare for the conversation, not to spray applications everywhere.

A sniper, not a machine gun

The “machine gun” approach: one CV for a hundred jobs and a cover letter that sounds like AI. It drowns among thousands like it. The “sniper” approach: five jobs that really fit you. For each one, the agent compares the requirements with your experience, suggests what to move to the top of your CV and prepares interview questions. The key rule: no made-up experience. An agent will happily credit you with “confident Python,” but the first interview question will expose it. Better to be honest: “I know the basics and I’m taking a course.”

Try it: the career agent

Find one job you’re genuinely interested in. Copy its text and your CV without your phone number and address, and paste the brief below. The agent will list the main requirements, honestly show what you have and what you don’t, and suggest edits. Then ask it to run a mock interview: one question at a time, with feedback on each answer. That’s how Liza prepared for a marketing internship interview: two of the five questions in the real interview were almost word for word the same.

Check yourself

What will help him in the exam?
Correct answer: A “hints, not answers” mode and self-testing. In the PNAS study, plain chat boosted practice grades, but in the AI-free exam students did 17% worse. A tutor with hints almost removed that drop.
Which way of preparing works better?
Correct answer: The agent asks questions from her notes, she answers without prompts. Recalling without prompts beats rereading: the material sticks longer. And the agent collects mistakes for review.
What should she do with this line?
Correct answer: Remove it and honestly write: “I know the basics, taking a course”. Made-up experience is exposed by the first question and hurts trust more than an honest gap.
Which plan is stronger?
Correct answer: Pick 5 that fit and prepare a CV and interview for each. With 11,000 applications a minute, precision wins. Five strong, well-prepared applications give better odds than a hundred identical ones.

← Money: the subscription hunter Schedules: the agent shows up by itself →