con gran solvencia

21:54 Feb 14, 2019 

of it" Or "very ably" "with great skill" "with great cleverness". See, the point is that I may be retarded or dumb and still (somehow, someway) take full advantage of your advices... despite my dullness. The point the original text is conveying is that "he took full advantage of it in a very competent and skilled manner". He proved to be very apt, quick, bright, intelligent student.

16:53 Feb 14, 2019 

Thanks. Regarding the imperfect tense, "took" is implicitly imperfect here in any case, because of the context. I wouldn't translate the imperfect Spanish verbs in that sentence with the progressive past (i.e., used to take, was taking). In my opinion, the imperfect tense is implicit in "were" (eran), "spent" (dedicaban) and "took advantage of" (aprovechaba). The only verb where "used to" would sound natural (to me) is "dedicaban", but even then it's not necessary to indicate an ongoing past action.
You could, however, make the imperfect tense explicit by using the past "would", i.e., "...he would ably take advantage of it...", but it still seems to me more a question of style than accuracy.

05:08 Feb 14, 2019 

This option may work better. In looking at the Spanish again, the "aprovechaba" is "imperfecto", that is, it would be more like a progressive in English, i.e., "he was taking advantage / he used to take advantage of it with great proficiency / with a very good level of efficiency / in a very able manner."