MyStudyBro

Overview.

MyStudyBro was born out of a simple need: finding past paper questions by topic. As a student preparing for A-Levels, I struggled to target my revision efficiently. So I built a tool that lets users generate tailored handouts from real exam papers, grouped by topic, exam-board, and difficulty. Originally used by my school in Cyprus, it has since expanded to support international students across 25+ countries.

Key Features.

• Revision Exercise Generator: Get exercises from real past papers, filtered by unit and chapter
• Smart Retrieval: Past paper PDFs are dynamically sliced - only relevant questions and solutions are shown
• Topic Mapping: Exercises are tied to specific curriculum chapters (e.g., "Polar Coordinates" in Further Mathematicsl F2)
• Admin Intereface: Exam boards, subjects, chapters, papers and exercises are all manageable via a secure backend
• No Login for Students: Fully open for learners - authentication is reserved for admin panel acceess

Tech Stack.

• Frontend: NextJS with State Management
• Backend: Node.js, Express.js REST API
• ORM / DB: Sequelize ORM, MySQL
• Frontend Hosting: Vercel
• Backend Hosting: Node.js Shared Hosting (planned migration to AWS)
• Security: Admin authentication and action logging
• Planned Upgrades: Auth0 Integration, Cloud Deployment, AI-Based LaTeX generation from past papers

Admin Panel.

Admins can:

• Create examination boards, qualifications, subjects and units
• Upload past paper PDFs
• Define topic chapters and assign questions to them
• Dynamically expose content across the app, including unit pages and handout generators

Architecture Insight.

Rather than storing thousands of cropped questions, MyStudyBro stores only full past paper PDFs. On request, the backend retrieves specific pages or question segments based on metadata (e.g., page ranges, exercise IDs). This design choice makes the system lightweight and storage-efficient.

Growth and Usage.

In 2024, the platform handled:

• 59,715 unique visitors,
• 77,491 visits
• 225,000 page views (actions)

Current Status.

• Live at mystudybro.com
• Actively used by thousands of students each month
• Not monetised - this is a contribution to students' academic success
• Future plans include a rebuilt frontend, improved backend hosting, and content generation features