Query the College Scorecard API

Steps

1. Register for a free API key at https://api.data.gov/signup; the key is required in every request and the default rate limit is 1,000 requests per IP address per hour.
2. Construct a GET request to the base endpoint https://api.data.gov/ed/collegescorecard/v1/schools with query parameter api_key=your_api_key; additional parameters filter and shape the response.
3. Use the fields parameter to request only the variables you need (e.g., fields=id,school.name,school.state,latest.admissions.admission_rate.overall,latest.earnings.10_yrs_after_entry.median); requesting all fields by default returns an extremely large payload.
4. Filter results using field-based operators: school.state=CA returns California institutions; school.degrees_awarded.predominant=3 filters for institutions predominantly awarding bachelor's degrees; combine filters with & in the query string.
5. Paginate using per_page (max 100) and page parameters; the response envelope includes metadata.total indicating the total number of matching records — iterate pages until all records are retrieved.
6. For bulk downloads of the full dataset rather than API queries, download the CSV files from https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/ which contain all variables for all institutions and are updated with each annual release.