Better resources aren't enough —
you need a sharper way to learn.
Lab45 exists to narrow the gap between what your last score reports and what you should actually do next — especially for high-stakes exams where official past papers are thin on the ground and time disappears thirty seconds at a time.
“A score tells you what happened. It doesn't tell you what to change.”
From our archive — why we built Lab45
Oxbridge preparation fragments easily — expensive courses, recycled PDFs, advice that sounds confident but doesn't fit how you actually lose marks. For exams like the ESAT, the usual foundation — years of official past papers — barely exists. You still have to sit the real thing under real pressure.
We built Lab45 because students don't only need more questions. They need a clearer way to think about how they're learning — what to drill, what to abandon mid-question, and how to review a mock so the next one counts.
The product is written and calibrated by people who've been inside these exams — so practice matches how the paper actually feels, not how it looks on a syllabus outline.
Built by people
who sat the exams.
Yejun Lee
Founder · Product design
Engineering · St John’s · IB 45IB 45 (May 2025). He spent a semester in Industrial Engineering at Seoul National University before Engineering at St John’s College, Cambridge. He grew up between Korean schooling and the IB. At Lab45 he designs and builds the product end to end: Arc, the dashboard, payments, onboarding, and how the whole thing hangs together. He wanted a platform that behaved like one coherent product, not a pile of PDFs with a login.
Mideum Shin
Co-founder · Questions & materials
NatSci · Christ’s · IBOIBO medalist; NatSci at Christ’s College, Cambridge; Seoul Science High School; Presidential Science Scholarship recipient. Olympiad biology left him impatient with vague prompts. At Lab45 he leads the academic side of what we ship — questions, model solutions, and curriculum-style resources that sit alongside mocks — and pushes drafts until every hard question earns its difficulty.
Junseo Yoo
Co-founder · Questions & materials
Physics · Seoul National UniversityPhysics major at Seoul National University; Hansung Science High School. Problem setter for the SNU Integration Bee and gold prize winner at the National University Mathematics Competition — a nationwide contest for university students across Korea. Calm in conversation, stubborn on detail — the habits that matter when a solution has to stay correct after midnight. At Lab45 he works with Mideum on the same pipeline: the question bank, worked answers, and written materials students use when they review.
The team behind our questions.
Hyunjin Lee
Authoring & review
Mathematics · St John's · IOAAMathematics at St John's College, Cambridge; STEP SS; TMUA 9.0; Seoul Science High School; IOAA national team candidate; Presidential Science Scholarship recipient. He stress-tests drafts for clarity and difficulty — especially where a question needs to feel fair under exam timing.
M.Y.
Authoring & review
Mathematics · St John's · ISEFMathematics at St John's College, Cambridge; STEP SS; TMUA 9.0; Physics at Seoul National University; Gyeonggi Science High School; ISEF award winner. He brings competition-style rigour to how problems are set and how model solutions are written.
H.L.
Authoring & review
Engineering · Oxford · IB 44IB 44 (May 2025); Engineering at the University of Oxford. She reviews question sets and solutions for consistency — making sure difficulty, wording, and marking logic hold up end to end.
Hyunseo Kim
Authoring & review
Biomedical Engineering · Imperial · IB 45IB 45 (May 2025); Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London; Presidential Science Scholarship recipient. She works on authoring and review across STEM modules, with a sharp eye for where students lose marks on interpretation.
What we believe in.
Precision
Mocks and questions are calibrated to how these exams actually behave — difficulty, pacing, and the misleading routes that look right in the first stretch. We engineer traps on purpose, then teach you how to see them.
Access
Serious preparation should not depend on wealth or connections. Lab45 exists so the measuring instruments — diagnostics, mocks, clear review — are available to anyone willing to put in the work.
Technology
Dashboards and analytics amplify judgment; they do not replace it. The goal is to close the gap between what happened on your last attempt and what you should do next.
Nothing here exists
by accident.
Restraint
We remove more than we add. Most ideas don't make it through — not because they're bad, but because a better product means fewer things asking for your attention. What stays has to justify itself, repeatedly, against everything it pushes out.
The idea
Early work focused on mocks that matched real pressure and timing — not comfortable textbook drills.
Alpha launch
First 50 students onboarded. Mock exam engine and real-time scoring go live.
Beta release
Full mock exam suite, 200+ students, 87% offer rate. Interview prep in development.
What's next
More exams, AI-powered interview prep, and personalised study plans.
The idea
Early work focused on mocks that matched real pressure and timing — not comfortable textbook drills.
Alpha launch
First 50 students onboarded. Mock exam engine and real-time scoring go live.
Beta release
Full mock exam suite, 200+ students, 87% offer rate. Interview prep in development.
What's next
More exams, AI-powered interview prep, and personalised study plans.
Start with something
that moves the
next sitting.
Open your home dashboard, run a mock, or read how we think about review — start anywhere, but start with something real.