Clastify APIclastify.com ↗
Search and retrieve Common App essay examples from Clastify. Access essay grades, applicant scores, college decisions, and prompt filters via 2 endpoints.
What is the Clastify API?
The Clastify API provides access to Common App essay examples through 2 endpoints: search_essays for keyword-based discovery and get_essay_detail for per-essay metadata. Each essay record can include the assigned letter grade (A–F), the Common App prompt number, SAT/ACT/GPA scores, colleges the applicant was accepted to or rejected from, and view/rating statistics. Results from search_essays return up to 100 essays per page and support filtering by grade, prompt, and application year.
curl -X POST 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/6128f84e-008e-4d12-ae7f-2511e4ef81af/search_essays' \
-H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
"query": "leadership",
"page": "1",
"grade": "A",
"prompt": "2",
"application_year": "2023/2024"
}'Search Common App essay examples by keyword. Returns up to 100 essays per page ranked by relevance, with metadata including essay grade (A-F), prompt number, colleges accepted/rejected, applicant scores, and marking status. A non-empty search query is required.
| Param | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| page | integer | Page number for pagination. |
| grade | string | Filter by essay grade. Only essays with completed marking have grades. |
| queryrequired | string | Search keywords to find relevant essay examples (e.g. 'leadership', 'diversity', 'family'). |
| prompt | string | Filter by Common App prompt number (e.g. '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7'). |
| application_year | string | Filter by application year in format 'YYYY/YYYY' (e.g. '2023/2024'). |
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"page": "current page number",
"count": "number of essays returned in this page",
"essays": "array of essay objects with id, title, prompt, grade, marking_status, colleges, scores, and statistics"
},
"sample": {
"page": 1,
"count": 14,
"essays": [
{
"id": "64c11a5ff8603e0013d657e7",
"grade": "A",
"major": null,
"title": "From Struggle to Success: A Journey of Resilience and Entrepreneurship",
"prompt": "2",
"scores": {
"act": {},
"sat": {}
},
"premium": false,
"category": "Common App",
"statistics": {
"views": 3069,
"rating_up": 32,
"rating_down": 1
},
"marking_status": "completed",
"relevance_score": 0.694,
"application_year": "2020/2021",
"colleges_accepted_to": [
"Stanford University"
],
"colleges_rejected_from": []
}
]
}
}About the Clastify API
Searching Essay Examples
The search_essays endpoint accepts a required query string and returns a ranked list of matching Common App essay examples. Each result includes an essay id, title, assigned grade (A through F, or null for ungraded essays), marking_status, prompt number, and a colleges field listing institutions associated with the applicant's outcomes. Optional filters include grade, prompt (values 1–7 matching the official Common App prompts), and application_year in YYYY/YYYY format. Pagination is supported via the page parameter, and each response includes a count field indicating how many essays were returned on that page.
Retrieving Essay Detail
The get_essay_detail endpoint takes an essay_id from search results and returns the full metadata record for that essay. Response fields include grade, major (applicant's intended field of study), prompt, scores (an object containing SAT, ACT, GPA, and IB values), and statistics with views, rating_up, and rating_down counts. The premium boolean flag indicates whether full essay text requires elevated access on the source platform. The type field is set to College and category to Common App for all records in this dataset.
Coverage and Filtering
Grades are only present on essays that have completed Clastify's marking process — the marking_status field reflects this state. Essays without completed marking will return a null grade. The application_year filter lets you scope results to a specific admissions cycle, which is useful when tracking how accepted essay styles shift year over year. All filtering parameters are optional except the search query, which must be non-empty.
The Clastify API is a managed, monitored endpoint for clastify.com — not a raw scraper you maintain. Every endpoint is automatically health-checked on a schedule, and when clastify.com changes and a check fails, the API is automatically queued for repair and re-verified. It is built to keep working as the site underneath it changes.
This isn't an official clastify.com API — it's an independent, maintained REST wrapper over public data. Where the source has no official API (or only a limited one), Parse gives you a stable contract over a source that never promised one, and keeps it current. Need a new endpoint or field? You can revise it yourself in plain English and the agent rebuilds it against the live site in minutes — contributing the change back to the shared API is free.
Will this API break when the source site changes?+
Is this an official API from the source site?+
Can I fix or extend this API myself if I need a new endpoint or field?+
What happens if I call an endpoint that has an issue?+
- Build a college essay analysis tool that groups examples by prompt number and letter grade to show applicants what A-graded responses look like.
- Aggregate accepted vs. rejected college outcomes alongside essay grades to identify patterns in successful applications.
- Filter essays by application year to compare writing trends across admissions cycles.
- Surface SAT, ACT, and GPA scores alongside essay grades to contextualize how test scores relate to essay quality ratings.
- Create a searchable database of Common App essays organized by intended major using the
majorfield fromget_essay_detail. - Track view and rating counts from the
statisticsfield to surface the most-engaged-with essay examples in a given category.
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 200 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 100 req/min |
| Team | $300/mo | 20,000 | 300 req/min |
| Company | $1,000/mo | 100,000 | 500 req/min |
Each endpoint has a fixed posted price per successful call — most fall between 1 and 10 credits — shown on this API's page before you run it. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does Clastify have an official developer API?+
What does the `scores` field in `get_essay_detail` contain?+
scores object can include SAT, ACT, GPA, and IB values as reported by the essay submitter. These fields reflect what the applicant chose to share and may be null if the applicant did not provide a given score.Does the API return the full essay text?+
premium boolean in get_essay_detail indicates whether an essay requires elevated access on Clastify to read the full text. The API currently returns metadata, grades, scores, and college outcomes. Full essay body content is not currently exposed as a response field. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add an essay content endpoint if the underlying access is available.Can I retrieve essays filtered by a specific college or university?+
search_essays by a specific college name. The colleges field in search results shows which institutions appear in an applicant's decision record, but college-name filtering is not an available parameter. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add a college-name filter endpoint.How does pagination work in `search_essays`?+
page parameter to retrieve subsequent pages. Each response includes a count field showing how many essays are on the current page, with a maximum of 100 essays per page. There is no total-count field in the response, so iterate until count drops below 100 or returns zero.