Practicing with questions is one of the most effective ways to study, but writing them by hand takes hours. AI tools can do it in minutes, as long as you give them clear instructions and review the result. This guide shows how to do it with the Exam Simulator.
What is a question bank?
It's a file of multiple-choice questions about a subject: each with its correct answer, three believable wrong answers, a short explanation and, ideally, the sentence from the material that supports it. With a bank you can generate a different exam every time, practice by topic and review your mistakes.
What you need
- Your study PDFs (slides, notes or readings).
- An AI that accepts files: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Claude. The free versions work.
- The Exam Simulator open in your browser. No account needed.
Step by step
1. Fill in the bank details
In the simulator go to Create bank → Create with my AI (copy and paste). Enter the subject, how many questions you want and, optionally, the topics and the concepts you most want to practice.
2. Download the instructions
The simulator generates a text file with detailed instructions for the AI: what kind of questions to write, how to spread them across topics, what to avoid and what format to answer in. Download or copy it.
3. Give them to your AI along with your PDFs
Open a new chat, attach your PDFs and the instructions file, and write: "I'm attaching my study PDFs and an instructions file. Follow the instructions in the file to the letter." If your AI doesn't let you attach the text file, paste the instructions straight into the chat.
4. Load the result
The AI will give you a .json file or a block of text. Load or paste it into the simulator. If the answer came in several parts, you can load them all together.
5. Review before saving
The simulator shows you every question so you can remove the ones you're not sure about or fix details. If you load the same PDFs, it checks that each question's supporting sentence really exists in your material and flags the ones that might be made up.
How to get better questions
- Ask it to use only your material. The simulator's instructions already say so, to avoid facts from other sources your teacher never covered.
- Require believable wrong answers. A question with absurd distractors trains nothing.
- Avoid "all of the above" and "none of the above". They make questions ambiguous.
- Mix question types: definitions, differences between concepts and practical cases.
- Ask for the verbatim source. A sentence copied from the PDF lets you verify the answer is right.
Common problems
The answer gets cut off or comes in parts
AIs have a text limit per reply. The instructions ask it to split the bank into parts of 25 questions; type CONTINUE until you have them all and load them together.
The AI replied with plain text
Ask it: "Deliver it in the JSON format described in the instructions". It usually fixes it in the next message.
Questions about things that aren't in the material
Use the PDF verification and remove the questions whose sentence doesn't appear. If it happens a lot, try another AI or fewer PDFs at a time.
Automatic option with your own key
If you'd rather not copy and paste, the simulator can ask Gemini or OpenRouter for the questions directly, using a free key you can get in a few minutes. Your PDFs are sent only to the provider you choose, and the key is stored only in your browser.
Share your bank
From any bank you can use Share bank to download the file and send it via WhatsApp, email or Drive. Your classmates just load it into the simulator to practice with the same questions.