Last semester I ran a personal experiment. For my biology courses, I used ChatGPT. For my statistics courses, I used iTutor. I wanted to see if there was actually a meaningful difference between a general-purpose AI and one built specifically for studying.
Spoiler: there is. But maybe not in the ways you'd expect.
Where ChatGPT shines
Let me start with the positives. ChatGPT is incredibly flexible. I could ask it to write Python code to visualize my data, draft an email to my professor, and then switch to explaining mitosis — all in the same conversation. It's a Swiss Army knife.
For quick factual questions — "What's the difference between mitosis and meiosis?" — both tools gave solid answers. At this level, it honestly didn't matter which one I used.
Where things started diverging
The differences showed up when I needed more than a quick answer. When I was genuinely stuck on a concept and needed help working through it, the experience felt very different.
With ChatGPT, I'd ask about confidence intervals and get a technically correct explanation. But it was often pitched at a level that assumed I already understood things I didn't. When I asked follow-up questions, it would sometimes go off on tangents or give me way more information than I needed.
iTutor was more... focused. It felt like it was trying to figure out where I was and meet me there. If I asked a vague question, instead of dumping everything it knew, it would ask what specific part was confusing me. That back-and-forth made a real difference.
The study planning thing surprised me
Honestly, I didn't expect to use the study planning features much. But having an AI look at my upcoming exams and create a study schedule that spaced out my review sessions? That was genuinely helpful. ChatGPT can do something similar if you prompt it carefully, but having it built-in meant I actually used it.
The progress tracking was similar — seeing which topics I'd covered and where I still had gaps gave me a clearer picture than my scattered notebook ever did.
The material upload feature was a game-changer
For statistics, I uploaded my professor's lecture slides to iTutor. Being able to ask questions directly about my course material — not just generic statistics concepts — was huge. "Can you explain what Professor Chen means by 'robust estimation' in slide 34?" That kind of contextual help isn't something ChatGPT can easily do unless you paste everything in manually each time.
What I'd recommend
If you need a general-purpose AI assistant that also happens to help with studying sometimes, ChatGPT is great. If studying is the main thing and you want something that actually tracks your progress, adapts to your level, and integrates with your course materials — a dedicated tool makes a noticeable difference.
I ended up with an A- in statistics and a B+ in biology. I'm not saying that's entirely because of the tools, but I definitely felt more supported and organized on the statistics side.