🎓 University Rankings Mega Pack Scraper

🚀 Pull global university rankings, US college directories, and online courses in seconds. Four datasets, one unified output.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-27 · 📊 1 unified schema per record · 4 sources · Global

Higher-ed market data in one shot. This combo scraper queries four public datasets in parallel: Shanghai ARWU, THE Impact Rankings, the US College Navigator (IPEDS) directory, and Stanford Online courses. Each record carries a source tag.

Useful for ed-tech competitive intelligence, ranking analysts, MBA / grad-school applicants, sales teams targeting universities, and researchers studying higher-ed market structure.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Ed-tech sales & marketing	Build university lead lists
Ranking analysts	Compare ARWU vs. Impact methodologies
Researchers	Higher-ed market analysis
Course aggregators	Track Stanford Online catalogue

📋 What the University Rankings Mega Pack Scraper does

• Pulls Shanghai ARWU annual world university rankings.
• Pulls THE Impact Rankings (SDG-aligned methodology).
• Streams the US IPEDS directory via Urban Institute mirror.
• Crawls Stanford Online courses with full metadata.

💡 Why it matters: four data sources, one keyword. Filter once.

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
query	string	Keyword (substring filter on name; Stanford search)
maxItems	integer	Per-source cap (free users limited to 10)
sources	array	Which datasets to run
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify proxy configuration

{
    "query": "engineering",
    "maxItems": 25,
    "sources": ["shanghai", "the-impact", "ed-college-navigator", "stanford"]
}

{
    "query": "",
    "maxItems": 100,
    "sources": ["shanghai"]
}

⚠️ Good to Know: maxItems applies per source. Selecting all 4 with maxItems=20 returns up to 80 records.

📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
🎓 source	string	shanghai / the-impact / ed-college-navigator / stanford
📌 title	string	University or course name
🔗 url	string	Canonical URL
🆔 id	string	Source-specific identifier
⋯	mixed	Source-specific fields (rank, location, course duration, etc.)
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp
❌ error	string	Null on success

{
    "source": "the-impact",
    "title": "Western Sydney University",
    "rank": "1",
    "overallScore": "99.2",
    "location": "Australia"
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

✨	Feature
🎓	4 datasets, 1 run
🤝	Unified schema
⚡	Parallel execution
💸	Pay-per-event

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Alternative	Issue
Manual tabular open	Stale, separate files
Paid ranking APIs	Subscription cost
Single-source scrapers	No cross-dataset view

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free account w/ $5 credit.
2. Open the actor page and click Try for free.
3. Set query, maxItems, pick sources.
4. Click Start.
5. Open tabular / spreadsheet / tabular / tabular.

💼 Business use cases

Ed-tech lead generation

Use IPEDS directory to build prospect lists by state/sector.

Ranking intelligence

Compare ARWU vs. THE Impact for the same institution.

Course aggregation

Mirror Stanford Online catalogue into your platform.

Grad-school advising

Surface relevant universities by keyword across two rankings.

🔌 Automating University Rankings Mega Pack

• Make / Zapier - Slack alert when a school joins top 100.
• Airbyte - sync to data warehouse.
• GitHub Actions - schedule weekly refresh.
• Google Drive - auto-tabular.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Research

Track Impact Rankings methodology trends.

Personal

Build a personal shortlist of graduate programs.

Non-profit

Identify HBCUs and tribal colleges via IPEDS.

Experimentation

Feed unified ranking data to LLMs for recommendations.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Drop the actor URL into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or GitHub Copilot.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

❓ Do I need an API key? No.

❓ Can I run just one source? Yes - set sources: ["shanghai"].

❓ Does maxItems apply globally? No - per source.

❓ Why is query a substring filter? Most ranking JSONs don't support server-side search; we filter client-side.

❓ How fresh? Real-time hits to upstream APIs.

❓ What if a source fails? Other sources still return.

❓ Output shape? tabular records, tabular, tabular, HTML.

❓ Are Stanford courses paginated? Yes - auto-follows next.

❓ Is IPEDS year fixed? Currently 2022 (latest available year on the Urban mirror).

❓ Free tier? Yes - 10 items.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Make, Zapier, n8n, Airbyte, GitHub Actions, Slack, Discord, Google Drive, S3, BigQuery, Snowflake, Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB.

🔗 Recommended Actors

Actor	Purpose
Shanghai ARWU Rankings	ARWU only
THE Impact Rankings	Impact only
ED College Navigator	IPEDS only
Stanford Online Courses	Courses only

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with any university or ranking body. Only publicly available data collected.