About Akash Avhad
Test Performance Expert for GMAT, CAT, SAT Math and GRE Math. 15+ years of one-on-one coaching. Based in Princeton, NJ.
Who I am
I am not a test prep instructor who happened to score well on the exams I teach.
I am a physician and MBA who spent two decades building frameworks for diagnosis: first in medicine, then in business, and finally in the work that turned out to suit me best. That work is understanding exactly how a mind behaves under exam pressure, and building a path to elite performance from that understanding.
I completed my MBBS in Mumbai, trained in clinical diagnosis: the discipline of not treating symptoms until you have correctly identified their root cause. I then earned an MBA in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in New Delhi, one of India’s most selective business schools, after scoring in the 99.2 percentile in my very first CAT attempt.
After my MBA, I joined a pharmaceutical company in international business development across the Asia-Pacific region. During those two years I began teaching MBA entrance preparation on the side. Sitting across from students as they worked through problems, I found I could see not just whether they got the answer right, but precisely where their thinking broke down. That, and a genuine love of teaching, changed the direction of my career.
The path
The origin
I began teaching part-time at MBA entrance coaching institutes in Mumbai while holding a corporate role. The response from students was immediate. Not because I was entertaining or motivating, but because I could explain exactly why they were getting things wrong, not just what the right answer was.
Within months, I was the faculty students would petition to keep. When institute management reassigned batches to other instructors, students wrote signed letters asking for me to be reinstated. It happened more than once.
I also saw what was wrong with the institutional model. Large batches. Rigid syllabi set for the average student. Faculty rotating mid-course. No individual diagnosis and no continuity. The system was designed to sell enrolment, not to build performance.
In 2017, I left to coach independently: online, one-on-one or in small groups, where every student gets the individual attention the work requires.
That decision has defined everything since. Over 15+ years I have refined the Performance Optimization Framework, which starts not with content but with diagnosis: finding the specific habits and inefficiencies that limit each student’s score. Today I use it for four exams: GMAT and CAT across all sections, SAT Math and GRE Math. The exams differ. The framework does not.
How the framework worksBy the numbers
The methodology
Most tutors diagnose content gaps. Across 15+ years, I have found that most scores that stop moving despite real effort have an execution problem, not a content problem. The student knows the material, but their mind works against them during the exam in ways they cannot see. My job is to make those patterns visible, then correct them.
Every engagement begins with a Performance Diagnostic: a free one-hour, one-on-one session that looks at how you read questions, how well you know and apply concepts, and whether you use the methods that save time. No two students receive the same plan.
I scored in the 99th percentile on the GMAT Focus Edition in December 2025, with Q90 in Quant, and 99.95 percentile on CAT 2024. A coach who is not current with an exam cannot coach it at the highest level, so staying current is non-negotiable for me.
More practice problems is the default advice of a tutor who has not diagnosed the problem. When a score stops moving despite hours of practice, the answer is rarely more volume. It is correcting the habit underneath. Once preparation is built around how you actually work, improvement becomes measurable instead of unpredictable.
The work in practice
Hriday R.
595675
GMAT Focus Edition · +80 points
A consultant based in Toronto came to me after scoring 595 on a previous GMAT attempt. He had already worked with other private tutors without meaningful improvement. He was sceptical, and enrolled only for Verbal coaching, not the full program.
During the Performance Diagnostic, I found something no previous tutor had surfaced: a consistent pattern of word-skipping while reading. It was not carelessness but an ingrained processing habit that made him lose the thread of complex passages. It caused systematic misreading in Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning, and he could not see it because it happened automatically.
We built specific reading strategies around it, structured ways of holding sentence meaning and argument context. We also addressed foundational weaknesses in Critical Reasoning that had gone undiagnosed. His Verbal score moved significantly.
That gave him the confidence to bring Quant and Data Insights into our work. We deconstructed multiple mock exams, parameter by parameter. The result: an 80-point improvement, from 595 to 675.
The problem was never what it appeared to be on the surface. A different diagnosis produced a different intervention, and a different intervention produced a result three previous tutors could not.
Exam currency
A coach who is not current with the exam cannot coach it at the highest level. I sit the GMAT and CAT regularly, as a professional commitment to staying current with what I teach.
Beyond the score · GMAT and CAT
I went through a demanding MBA entrance process myself. For GMAT and CAT students, the exam is the way into a career change that matters far more than the score, so my guidance goes past test day.
Guidance on building a realistic and ambitious list of programs, based on your profile, career goals and target score.
What an MBA actually opens: which programs lead where, which industries recruit from which schools, and how to think about the return on the investment.
Enrolled CAT students with interview calls from top-tier B-schools get free interview preparation and mock personal interviews.
This guidance is free for students enrolled in my programs. I do not charge separately for it.
Who I work with
Not everyone, and deliberately so. If any of these describes you, we are likely a strong fit.
If you are looking for shortcuts in effort, we won’t be a fit. My students bring discipline and accountability. What I bring in return is a precise diagnosis of what needs to change, and a structured plan to change it.
Begin here
The Performance Diagnostic is a free one-hour, one-on-one session. You leave knowing what is limiting your score and what to work on first.
Limited capacity · Serious candidates only