University Grounding Data

Overview

A university lookup API that answers two questions. Search by name, country or state to get institutions with their domains and websites; US results come from the NCES IPEDS directory with address, coordinates, control, level, highest degree, HBCU and land-grant flags. Or send a domain or a whole email address and the API says whether it is academic: it matches the domain and its parents against every institution's domains, then falls back to academic suffixes such as .edu and .ac.uk. Paid plans unlock the IPEDS figures for US institutions: enrollment, student-faculty ratio, admission rate, in-state and out-of-state tuition, graduate tuition and room and board.

Live Test University Grounding Data Source →

The tool

Once your client is connected to the VerveContext server, this appears in its tool list as UniversityGroundingData. It is read-only and open-world — it fetches and never mutates anything on your side — so most clients call it without asking you to confirm.

{
  "name": "UniversityGroundingData",
  "arguments": {}
}

Connecting

One server URL covers every source in the catalog, including this one. Authorization is OAuth: the client opens a browser once, and there is no key to paste into a config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vervecontext": {
      "url": "https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp

Per-client setup — Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT — is on the MCP setup page.

Arguments

These are the properties on the tool's inputSchema, so a well-behaved client validates them before the call is made. Premium arguments are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

What the model gets back

The result carries a structuredContent object matching the tool's declared outputSchema, so a client reads fields without parsing prose. status is "ok" and error is null on success; a null field means the value was not available for that input, not that the call failed.

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{
  "status": "ok",
  "error": null,
  "data": {
    "domain": null,
    "isAcademicDomain": null,
    "matchType": null,
    "matchedDomain": null,
    "count": 1,
    "totalMatches": 1,
    "universities": [
      {
        "id": "us-166683",
        "name": "Massachusetts Institute of Technology",
        "aliases": [
          "MIT",
          "M.I.T."
        ],
        "country": "United States",
        "countryCode": "US",
        "stateProvince": "MA",
        "city": "Cambridge",
        "address": "77 Massachusetts Avenue",
        "zip": "02139-4301",
        "latitude": 42.359243,
        "longitude": -71.093226,
        "timezone": "America/New_York",
        "domains": [
          "mit.edu",
          "web.mit.edu"
        ],
        "website": "https://web.mit.edu/",
        "phone": "6172531000",
        "ipedsUnitId": 166683,
        "control": "private_nonprofit",
        "level": "four_year",
        "highestDegree": "doctorate",
        "offersUndergraduate": true,
        "offersGraduate": true,
        "hbcu": false,
        "tribal": false,
        "landGrant": true,
        "locale": "city_midsize",
        "sizeBand": "10000_19999",
        "system": null,
        "stats": {
          "enrollmentTotal": 11920,
          "enrollmentUndergraduate": 4576,
          "enrollmentGraduate": 7344,
          "studentFacultyRatio": 3,
          "admissionRate": 5,
          "tuitionInDistrict": 60156,
          "tuitionInState": 60156,
          "tuitionOutOfState": 60156,
          "graduateTuitionInState": 59750,
          "graduateTuitionOutOfState": 59750,
          "roomAndBoard": 19390,
          "tuitionYear": "2023-24",
          "enrollmentYear": 2023
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Premium fields are absent rather than zeroed on plans that do not include them, so check for presence instead of comparing to 0.

Why ground on it

A model can produce something that looks like this answer from its training data, and be confidently out of date or simply wrong. This source returns the current value in a shape you can check, which is the difference between an answer you can cite and one you have to hedge.

Point an evaluation at count: it is the field most worth pinning a claim to, and it is either present and current or absent — never plausibly invented.

Failure modes

Errors come back as tool errors carrying a sentence the model can act on, not a bare status code. Error handling covers the full list.

A call costs 2 credits each time the tool actually runs; a model that reasons about the tool without calling it costs nothing.

Use cases

Student Discount Verification

Check that a sign-up email belongs to a university before granting an education plan.

Lead Enrichment

Turn the domain on an inbound lead into the university behind it, with country and website.

College Search

List US colleges in a state with control, level, enrollment and tuition for comparison tools.

Form Autocomplete

Suggest institution names as students type their school on an application form.

Other ways to use University Grounding Data

Set up University Grounding Data on VerveContext, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveContext account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

Related

More in Reference Data: