You — the person who downloaded Gradigo and is reading this article. The truth is, at that point you already rank as a fairly literate exam-taker.
Why? Because most exam-takers don't yet even have the idea of "studying with AI." Drilling the same prep-school textbook over and over, paying a counselor tens of thousands of yen an hour for interview practice — most people still rely solely on these traditional methods.
Traditional methods have value, of course. But in 2026, studying for an exam without using AI is like owning a smartphone yet living your whole life on a flip phone. Use every tool available. That's the iron rule for producing the greatest results within the limited time you have as a working professional.
In this article, I'll introduce three AI techniques I actually used in my own MBA prep and felt the effect of firsthand.
While studying for the GMAT, GRE, or TOEFL, have you ever hit a problem you couldn't understand even after reading the explanation?
In the past, you'd either stall there, wait until you could ask a prep-school teacher, or scour the internet for a similar explanation. Not anymore. Throw the problem straight at ChatGPT or Claude, and an explanation comes back in seconds.
"I already know that," you might think. But wait. The point isn't merely to ask. To get the most out of AI as a "private tutor," there are a few tricks.
Control the depth of the explanation yourself
Say you got a GMAT Critical Reasoning question wrong. Instead of just asking "explain this problem," try asking:
That last one — generating similar problems — is especially powerful. AI will produce problems in the very pattern you're weak at, almost infinitely, until you've mastered it. The volume of practice you felt prep-school problem sets never gave you, AI fills in.
Stock the problems you got wrong — this is what makes the difference
There's one more thing you absolutely must do when studying with AI: stocking the problems you got wrong.
Record the problems you couldn't solve or only vaguely understood on a platform like Notion or GitHub. "Wait, manage studying on GitHub?" you might think, but if you come from an engineering background, summarizing problems and explanations in Markdown is extremely comfortable. Excel or a spreadsheet works just as well, of course.
What matters is creating a state where you can return to your wrong answers any number of times. Humans are creatures who repeat the same mistakes. By visualizing your weak points and building a system to review them regularly, you minimize the risk of repeating the same mistake on test day.
The interview required as the second round of MBA admissions. The Speaking sections of TOEFL and IELTS. These "speaking" tests are the biggest wall for many Japanese exam-takers.
Until now, the options for interview practice were limited.
With ChatGPT's voice conversation feature, that wall suddenly gets lower.
"Act as an MBA interviewer and ask me the 'Why MBA?' question. Give me feedback after I answer." — just instruct it like that, and the AI plays the interviewer. There's some lag, but its accuracy improves month over month, and as an initial sparring partner the performance is more than enough.
Why AI interview practice works
Not just MBA interviews — hugely effective for TOEFL and IELTS Speaking too
This method works extremely well not only for MBA interviews but for TOEFL and IELTS Speaking practice. Instruct it, "I want to practice TOEFL Speaking Task 2. Give me a prompt, and after I answer in 45 seconds, score me and give feedback," and you can practice in a format close to the real test, as many times as you want.
Record + transcribe to "make visible" your weak points
Even better: record your practice. Record your conversation with the AI on your phone's voice-recorder app, then run it through a transcription tool like Whisper, and your speech turns into text.
This is remarkably powerful. Habits you can't notice yourself — too many "uh"s and "um"s, not stating your conclusion first, using the same connectors over and over — become obvious at a glance. Seeing your own speech as text is a little embarrassing, but the speed of improvement jumps dramatically.
Of course, there are still situations where you should borrow a professional counselor's power in the end. But the density of each session is completely different when you go to a counselor after finishing your first 10 or 20 rounds of sparring with AI, versus going in cold.
The third is a method that's surprisingly little-known, yet may have the biggest impact.
Have you heard of Google's tool NotebookLM? Feed it documents and the AI analyzes and summarizes their contents — but its greatest weapon is its automatic podcast generation.
Upload text or materials, and in about ten minutes it creates roughly a 15-minute podcast. Two hosts explain the content in a conversational style — easy to listen to, easy to understand.
"Can that really be used for studying?" you might ask. It can. Devastatingly so.
As TOEFL / IELTS listening prep
In TOEFL and IELTS, listening is the gateway demon for many exam-takers. And what you need most to raise your listening ability is overwhelming Exposure to English.
With NotebookLM, mass-produce podcasts on topics likely to appear on the test — environmental issues, economic policy, psychology, history — and listen on the commuter train, while running at the gym, while doing chores. You can turn every minute you're not at your desk into English-study time.
It takes only about ten minutes to create one session's podcast. Make five over the weekend, and your weekday commute turns entirely into listening practice.
Why it also works for GMAT / GRE Reading
Here is NotebookLM's true value. The GMAT and GRE have no listening section. But in Reading Comprehension, whether you have broad background knowledge dramatically changes the speed at which you solve problems.
GMAT and GRE Reading Comprehension draws passages from every field — science, economics, history, literary criticism, political science. Naturally, you read faster and understand better in fields where you have background knowledge.
For example, when a passage on American history or environmental policy — not especially familiar to Japanese readers — appears, the speed of comprehension is utterly different between reading it with zero background and reading it after having heard an overview in a podcast. Likewise, you can efficiently accumulate the background knowledge of the wide range of GRE topics — medicine, engineering, sociology, astronomy — in podcast form.
Not just exam prep. It works for the job hunt, too.
This use of NotebookLM doesn't stop at exam prep. In the job hunt after entering an MBA, by turning your target industry's fundamentals and trends into podcasts, you can devote commute time and gym time to industry research. The industry knowledge asked in consulting interviews, the product analysis needed in tech interviews — NotebookLM becomes a powerful ally for this preparation too.
Organizing the three methods above, you can see AI covers every phase of exam prep.
| Phase | Traditional method | Using AI |
|---|---|---|
| Practice & explanations | Prep-school texts, reference books | Instant explanations via ChatGPT / Claude + infinite similar-problem generation |
| Weakness management | Handwritten notes, Excel | Systematic stocking in Notion / GitHub / Excel |
| Speaking practice | Counselor (tens of thousands of yen/hr) | 24/7 practice via ChatGPT voice chat |
| Interview prep | Mock interviews (expensive) | AI sparring → record → transcribe → improve |
| Listening boost | Problem-set CDs, hunting for podcasts | Mass-produce test-topic podcasts with NotebookLM |
| Reading background | Extensive reading (time-consuming) | Input in spare moments with NotebookLM |
| Industry research (job hunt) | Web searches, alumni visits | Have AI output the latest trends daily |
And these methods basically apply directly to the job hunt as well. By having AI output industry fundamentals and trends every day, you can absorb the latest news in your spare moments. For all of you tackling exam prep while chased by work as a professional, AI is the strongest partner for maximizing study efficiency.
Finally, the unavoidable topic: paying.
Both ChatGPT and Claude are usable to some degree even on the free plan. But if you're serious about using them for exam prep, I'll say it flatly: paying for the paid plan is essential.
"¥3,000 a month, huh…" — I understand the hesitation. But compare calmly.
| Service | Cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| MBA prep school (in-person) | ¥500K–1.5M | Curriculum + in-person instruction |
| Counselor (interview prep) | ¥20K–50K × 10 = ¥200K–500K | Professional feedback |
| TOEFL prep course | ¥100K–300K | Speaking / Writing instruction |
| AI (ChatGPT Plus, etc.) | ~¥3,000/mo × 12 = ~¥36K | All of the above, available 24/7 |
For ¥36,000 a year, you get a learning environment that rivals the hundreds of thousands to over a million yen you'd pay a prep school or counselor. Of course, AI doesn't completely replace prep schools or counselors. But it's a fact that paying for just one of these services covers the bulk of the learning you used to spend hundreds of thousands of yen on.
This isn't a "don't go to prep school" argument. The value of prep schools and counselors is still large. But by using AI alongside them, the efficiency of that investment multiplies several times over. Isn't it far too wasteful to hesitate over a ¥3,000 monthly subscription and miss out on a million yen's worth of learning opportunity?
AI tools are no longer just for a tech-savvy few. In 2026, whether or not you study with AI is becoming a difference that directly affects whether you pass or fail.
One caveat, though: don't take AI's answers at face value. Especially for mathematical calculations and statements about the latest data, there's a risk AI generates incorrect information (hallucination). AI explanations are ultimately a "supporting tool to aid understanding"; always build the habit of cross-checking against official answers and trustworthy materials.
As long as you keep this caveat in mind, AI is a 24/7 private tutor — and a nearly free one. It repeats explanations any number of times without a sour face. It creates infinite problems tailored to your weak points. It becomes your interviewer, and a podcast host too.
A tutor like this — there's no reason not to use it.
Your time — tackling exam prep while chased by work as a professional, or chased by lectures as a student — is finite. What maximizes the value of that finite time is AI, the new private tutor.
Use everything you can. Together with Gradigo, let's keep updating your exam strategy.
