BestColleges Scraper

Scrape BestColleges — the US college rankings and school-data site at bestcolleges.com. Fetch ranked schools from any program ranking page (computer science, nursing, business, psychology, and 60+ more), pull detailed school profiles, and enumerate program pages from subject hubs. HTTP-only via the site's embedded page data. No auth, no proxy.

What this actor does

• Three modes: byProgram (ranked schools), bySchool (profile), bySubject (program enumeration)
• Ranking data: rank, superlative ("Best for…"), program links, ranking year
• School stats: in/out-of-state tuition (undergrad + grad), admission rate, retention rate, earnings after 6 years, online-enrollment share, accreditation
• Filters: rank range, US state codes, ranking school year
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per ranked school (mode=byProgram)

• rank — position in the ranking
• schoolId, rankingId
• schoolName, city, stateName, stateCode
• schoolUrl, programUrl, programName
• superlativeTitle — e.g. "Best for Personalized Portfolio-Building"
• undergradTuitionInState, undergradTuitionOutOfState, gradTuitionInState, gradTuitionOutOfState
• admissionRate, retentionRate, earningsAfterSixYears, totalStudentsEnrolled
• percentOnlineEnrollment, percentOnlinePrograms
• schoolLevel, accreditation, isPrivate
• blurb — editor's summary
• rankingName, schoolYear, rankingType, rankingStatus
• sourceUrl
• recordType, scrapedAt

Output per school profile (mode=bySchool)

• schoolId, title, blurb, image
• city, state, stateCode, url
• inStateTuitionUndergrad, outOfStateTuitionUndergrad, inStateTuitionGrad, outOfStateTuitionGrad
• totalEnrollmentUndergrad, totalEnrollmentGrad, percentAdmittedUndergrad
• totalBachelorsPrograms, graduationRateTotalCohort, studentFacultyRatio, fulltimeRetentionRate
• percentOnlineEnrollment
• isPremium, isPrivate, notForProfit, isHbcu, militaryFriendly
• religiousAffiliation, accreditorStatus, admissionTestScores, openAdmissionPolicy

Output per program page (mode=bySubject)

• uri, title, sourceUrl

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	byProgram	byProgram / bySchool / bySubject
programUri	string	computer-science/bachelors	Ranking page path (mode=byProgram)
schoolUri	string	–	School profile path (mode=bySchool)
subjectUri	string	–	Subject hub path (mode=bySubject)
rankMin	int	–	Keep ranks ≥ this
rankMax	int	–	Keep ranks ≤ this (top-N)
stateCodes	array	–	US state codes, e.g. ["NY","CA"]
schoolYear	int	–	Ranking year, e.g. 2026
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap (1–1000)

Example: top-20 online CS bachelor's programs

{
  "mode": "byProgram",
  "programUri": "computer-science/bachelors",
  "rankMax": 20
}

Example: all ranked nursing schools in NY and CA

{
  "mode": "byProgram",
  "programUri": "nursing/bachelors",
  "stateCodes": ["NY", "CA"]
}

Example: school profile

{
  "mode": "bySchool",
  "schoolUri": "university-of-colorado-boulder"
}

Example: enumerate finance programs from a subject hub

{
  "mode": "bySubject",
  "subjectUri": "business/bachelors"
}

Use cases

• Higher-ed research — compare program rankings and school stats side by side
• Counseling / advising — shortlist schools by cost, admission rate, and outcomes
• Market analysis — track tuition and enrollment trends across ranking years
• Content pipelines — feed ranking pages into guides and comparison tools
• Prospective students — filter ranked schools by state and affordability

FAQ

What is BestColleges? An independent publisher of US college rankings, program guides, and school profiles (bestcolleges.com).

Do I need an account or API key? No. All modes read public page data.

Where does the data come from? Each ranking page embeds its full ranking JSON (schools, ranks, stats) directly in the page; school profiles embed their stats the same way. The actor reads those embedded payloads.

How do I find ranking page paths? Browse bestcolleges.com — e.g. /computer-science/bachelors/, /nursing/masters/, /business/bachelors/finance/. Use bySubject on a hub like /business/bachelors/ to enumerate the program pages in that section.

Why are some tuition fields missing? Schools that don't report a figure simply omit it; empty fields are always dropped.

What does superlativeTitle mean? BestColleges' editors tag each ranked school with a reason it was chosen, e.g. "Best for Working Adults".

How fresh is the data? BestColleges publishes annual rankings; each page carries its ranking year (schoolYear) so you can filter by edition.

Is this affiliated with BestColleges? No, this is a third-party actor using the public website.

Limitations

• Only pages that carry embedded rankings work with byProgram (program ranking pages). State resource pages and blog articles contain no ranking data.
• bySubject enumerates links from the hub page's HTML; deep program pages under other sections may need their own hub paths.
• The internal school-search API (api.mobius.highereducation.com) requires a session token from the site and is not used; school discovery happens through ranking pages and subject hubs instead.
• bySchool currently returns 0 records for most school slugs: bestcolleges.com's /schools/{slug}/ pages are served as a client-side-rendered shell (a site-side server error — the HTTP 200 page carries no profile data). The actor reports a status message in that case. School data remains fully available through byProgram (which carries tuition, admission rate, earnings, and accreditation per school).
• Some program hubs (e.g. business/bachelors) intermittently serve the same empty shell from datacenter IPs; the actor retries those fetches automatically, and pages that stay broken produce a clean 0 with a status message.