SAGE, the MDCAT companion: how to use it well

SAGE is the AI study companion inside mymdcat. It answers questions, explains reasoning, and cites a textbook chapter when it finds a relevant passage.

It is useful in the moment you are stuck. It is not a replacement for a teacher, a textbook or your own practice. This guide shows how to use it without expecting more than it can do.

What SAGE is

SAGE is a chat interface connected to the mymdcat question bank and a textbook corpus. You can ask about a concept, paste a question, ask for a comparison, or ask it to quiz you.

When retrieval succeeds, SAGE names the board, subject, grade and chapter it used. It does not give page numbers. When retrieval fails, it can still answer from model knowledge. That answer may be right, but it has no textbook citation behind it.

The corpus is Punjab (PTB), Sindh (STB) and Federal (NBF). Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan fall back to the Federal books. If your board uses a different textbook, check the wording against your own book.

Paste the full question when you ask about an MCQ. A stem without its options gives SAGE less to work with, and an answer without the options can miss the distinction the examiner is testing.

What it does well

SAGE is good at four jobs.

It explains a wrong option. It compares two concepts that feel similar. It turns a chapter into a short set of questions. It reads your reasoning and points to the first step that went wrong.

Those jobs share a shape: they are small, specific and checkable. The more specific your prompt, the more useful the answer.

It is less useful for broad requests such as "teach me biology". The answer will be a summary, and a summary is not a study plan. Ask for one decision at a time.

That rule is easy to forget. A prompt that asks for an explanation, a quiz and a revision plan in one message produces a long reply that does three jobs badly. Send three short prompts instead.

Five prompts that work

Use these as templates. Replace the chapter and question with your own.

1. Explain a wrong option. "Here is an MCQ. The key says B. Explain why C is wrong, and why B is better. Question: [paste] Options: [paste]."
2. Compare two similar concepts. "Compare osmosis and diffusion for MDCAT. Give a two-column table, one example of each, and one trap that appears in MCQs."
3. Build a three-day revision plan. "I have 90 minutes a day for three days. Build a revision plan for the chapter on bioenergetics. Include 20 practice questions and one short review on day three."
4. Quiz me on a chapter. "Quiz me on the circulatory system, one question at a time. Wait for my answer before you explain. Start with an easy question."
5. Check my reasoning. "Here is my reasoning for this question. Do not give me the answer. Find the first wrong step and ask me a question that helps me fix it."

The fifth prompt is the most useful and the least used. It is tempting to ask for the answer. A better habit is to ask where the reasoning broke.

How to check an answer before you trust it

Treat every SAGE answer as a draft that you must verify.

• If it cites a chapter, open the chapter and check the statement.
• If it gives no citation, check the textbook before you memorise the claim.
• If it gives a number, redo the calculation yourself.
• If it disagrees with your teacher, ask the teacher. A teacher knows your syllabus and your exam board.

A citation is evidence that a passage was retrieved. It is not proof that the answer is correct in every detail. A missing citation is a prompt to check, not a reason to discard the answer.

The limits, stated plainly

SAGE does not carry page numbers. It cites at chapter level.

It can answer without a source. The corpus does not include a separate Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or Balochistan textbook set.

It has a daily allowance. A free account gets 10 questions a day. The MDCAT Pass allows 20 questions an hour. The allowance exists because each answer costs money to generate.

It does not know your class schedule, your teacher's marking style or the internal test your school will set. It cannot sit the exam for you. It does not promise a score.

Free and pass allowances

The free tier is a real product. You get 500 practice attempts in total, worked explanations on all of them, notes, flashcards and 10 SAGE questions a day.

The pass adds the full practice bank without the attempt cap, full mocks, the pre-2026 paper archive, analytics and 20 SAGE questions an hour. The pass is PKR 10,000, one payment. The MDCAT and UCAT bundle is PKR 15,000. The ladder is on the pricing page.

If you are deciding whether to pay, use the free allowance for a week. Count how often you actually ask a question. A student who asks two questions a day does not need a higher SAGE limit. A student who hits 10 before noon will feel the difference.

A student who studies with a friend can also use the free week to test whether the habit sticks. Ten questions a day is enough to find out whether you reach for SAGE when you are stuck or only when you are bored.

A weekly SAGE routine

Do not open SAGE at random. Give it a slot in the week.

• Monday: paste the three questions you got wrong in practice and ask for the first wrong step.
• Wednesday: ask for a five-question quiz on the chapter you revised that day.
• Friday: ask for a comparison table for two concepts you keep confusing.
• Sunday: ask it to turn your error log into a three-item revision list for the coming week.

Keep the answers. A chat you never reread is a conversation, not a study session.

Keep a prompt log for one week. Write the prompt, the answer you used, and whether it was right. A week is enough to see which three or four prompt shapes do most of the work.

When to ask a teacher instead

Ask a teacher when the problem is about your syllabus, your school's marking, or a disagreement between two sources. Ask a teacher when you have asked SAGE the same question three times and still cannot explain the answer.

Bring the exact question and your attempt. "I do not understand chapter 4" is hard to answer. "I chose C because of this line, and the key says B" is easy to answer.

SAGE is available at 11pm. A teacher is not. That is its main advantage. Use it for the questions that cannot wait, and bring the unresolved ones to class.

Use SAGE to understand an answer, not to produce work you will submit as your own. If your school bans AI tools for an assignment, follow that rule.

How we checked this

The SAGE behaviour described here is the behaviour of the live product on 25 October 2026. The exam context comes from PMDC notices. We make no claim that SAGE improves a score, because we have not run a controlled trial. The methodology page explains how we review product claims.

Start a session on SAGE, or read the flashcards guide for the other half of the recall loop.