Barbara Austin PhD

Barbara Austin, PhD, has spent more than 30 years helping students get into and pay for college. A former college professor and the founder of College Quest, she has guided students to Stanford, MIT, Ivy Leagues, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Emory, Pomona, Amherst and many other outstanding colleges.

But her work is not simply about getting students admitted. It is about helping families become smarter college consumers.

Barbara teaches a counterintuitive truth: colleges don’t price tuition—they price students. Two families attending the same college can pay dramatically different amounts, depending on the student’s value, the colleges chosen and the strategy used.

In all her books, Barbara shares multiple strategies and stories that help students not only get into great colleges but pay for them

Her guiding principle: The goal isn’t merely to find a college your family can afford. It is to find colleges that can afford your student.