University Of Pittsburgh School Of Social Work Alumni: Fill & Download for Free

As of March 21, 2012, these are the most "active" universities on Quora:Assumptions and other considerations:Let us define "active" by university topic page follower count.We must assume that only a negligible number of people follow university topic pages without having attended those universities.These follower counts also include prospective students, incoming freshmen, alumni, faculty, staff, etc... So they're not a simple reading of "number of college students from X college with a Quora account." It's just an approximation.We should also consider that some universities have smaller student populations than others, so Caltech having 777 topic followers actually indicates relatively strong penetration, since their total student body size is 2231 (undergraduate + postgraduate). 35% of a campus on a website? Seems pretty good to me. Again, please keep in mind that out of 777, perhaps 100 are aspiring to go to Caltech, or 200 are alumni. These numbers are approximations.The list also doesn't take into account all graduate and professional schools. This is an important consideration, as many Quora users are either prospective applicants, current students, or alumni of these postgraduate institutions. On the other side of this coin, the data more closely reflects the similarity to Facebook's undergrad/college growth in early stages. ALSO: It's safe to assume that only a handful of people would list (follow) just their postgraduate level of education. Almost every person will also list (follow) their undergraduate institution as well, mitigating the problem quite a bit.This list is derived from the top 101 schools from the 2012 U.S. News and World Report National University Rankings.Interpretation and Analysis:Assuming little overlap, the total university population (or at least those associated / interested in these universities) on Quora, is: 68,979.So nearly ~70,000 Quora users are somehow associated with the Top 101 colleges in the US (either by interest or actual attendance). As an aside, I find this number to be weaker than expected. But then again, we just don't know exactly how many college students visit the site without signing up as users. That's a huge factor we must consider, especially if we contemplate a hypothetical scenario where Quora monetizes through advertising. Since they keep the site open to all (even non-users), they could still generate revenue through all the people viewing pages without signing up. If college kids keep citing Quora as the go-to source for information, that would be a win for Quora, despite these topic page follower counts being low.There doesn't seem to be a strong correlation between higher rankings and higher followers. You don't see the top 10 schools (by USNWR ranking) also loosely fit the top 10 most followed topic pages. In fact, the top 10 most followed range from schools ranked between 1-34.Geographically, a great chunk of the "most active" are from Boston, the SF Bay Area, New York, and Los Angeles. This seems to also correlate with education per capita stats we have from the census. That's a good stat to compare with since Quora has a core user-base of highly educated people. It would be interesting to see how the university metrics measure up with overall geographic metrics and see if anything pops out there. In the absence of Quora providing any of this data, that would require a similar data mining approach of viewing the follower count for various cities.Stanford University is the "most active" by follower count, with ~8.5k followers. It's important to note that Quora is just a few blocks from the Stanford campus and is closely intertwined with the overall community. This begs the question: is the Stanford follower count high because Quora is nearby or because people that go to, went to, or are interested in Stanford comprise a core part of the Quora user base? If we look at the next most active school (Harvard), we see a similarly high count of ~5.3k followers. Remember, Harvard is 3,000 miles away on a different coast (and it's still got that many followers). This suggests that while Stanford's numbers might be inflated due partially to Quora's physical proximity, it's because there's an association based on these schools' student body preferences (and they prefer sites like Quora). The case of MIT at #3 further proves this point.There's more we could do with this data but this is what I'm putting up for now. Also: there's no easy way to get an accurate data set of college attendance, just these topic page follower numbers, so we should always temper our enthusiasm about these results given the condition of the data set.Overall, I think this is an important metric to follow. College students have historically always been eager to adopt technology and information tools. If they're numbers are lagging on the site, it's probably not a good sign.There is however a different way to view the Quora and higher education intersection. If we draw parallels to Facebook and their growth strategy, we'd have to focus on Quora as a social network and track user engagement. If we focus on Quora's content, however, then what we're really looking at is how the product evolves the concept of a knowledge repository beyond the traditional library/university paradigm (and the Internet in general). In that case, college-associated engagement wouldn't be as relevant.Parting note: if you spot any trends, shortcomings, or other suggestions, please point them out in the comments.If you've developed a scraper to mine data more easily, let me know. There's lots more work to be done ascertaining growth and the market opportunity for this company.For reference:Here's the master list I used with Quora links to university topic pages preserved so going back to update can be done easily. This list is also a way to view the data set sorted by USNWR ranking from highest to lowest [as of 2012-03-21]:Harvard University - 5322 followersPrinceton University - 1470 followersYale University - 1585 followersColumbia University - 1948 followersCalifornia Institute of Technology - 777 followersMassachusetts Institute of Technology - 3807 followersStanford University - 8543 followersUniversity of Chicago - 930 followersUniversity of Pennsylvania - 1372 followersDuke University - 1090 followersDartmouth College - 768 followersNorthwestern University - 899 followersJohns Hopkins University - 544 followersWashington University in St. Louis - 467 followersBrown University - 664 followersCornell University - 1365 followersRice University - 141 followersVanderbilt University - 278 followersUniversity of Notre Dame - 304 followersEmory University - 298 followersUniversity of California, Berkeley - 3267 followersGeorgetown University - 353 followersCarnegie-Mellon University - 2176 followersUniversity of Southern California - 1635 followersUniversity of California, Los Angeles - 1749 followersUniversity of Virginia - 480 followersWake Forest University - 168 followersUniversity of Michigan (Ann Arbor) - 1303 followersTufts University - 341 followersUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - 612 followersBoston College - 394 followersBrandeis University - 96 followersThe College of William & Mary - 39 followersNew York University - 2142 followersUniversity of Rochester - 187 followersGeorgia Institute of Technology - 936 followersUniversity of California, San Diego - 979 followersCase Western Reserve University - 83 followersLehigh University - 85 followersUniversity of California, Davis - 693 followersUniversity of Miami - 241 followersUniversity of California, Santa Barbara - 934 followersUniversity of Washington - 760 followersUniversity of Wisconsin - Madison - 245 followersPennsylvania State University - 344 followersUniversity of California, Irvine - 622 followersUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - 497 followersThe University of Texas at Austin - 799 followersYeshiva University - 40 followersThe George Washington University - 582 followersRensselaer Polytechnic Institute - 280 followersTulane University - 148 followersBoston University - 614 followersFordham University - 123 followersThe Ohio State University - 576 followersPepperdine University - 100 followersUniversity of Maryland, College Park - 357 followersTexas A&M University (TAMU) - 506 followersThe University of Connecticut - 105 followersUniversity of Florida - 921 followersUniversity of Pittsburgh - 249 followersNortheastern University - 444 followersPurdue University - 482 followersSouthern Methodist University - 83 followersSyracuse University - 543 followersUniversity of Georgia - 215 followersWorcester Polytechnic - 104 followersClemson University - 158 followersRutgers University - 394 followersUniversity of Minnesota - Twin Cities - 40 followersBrigham Young University - 615 followersMichigan State University - 592 followersUniversity of Iowa - 421 followersVirginia Tech - 593 followersBaylor University - 160 followersColorado School of Mines - 29 followersIndiana University- 732 followersUniversity of Alabama - 162 followersUniversity of California, Santa Cruz - 512 followersUniversity of Delaware - 132 followersUniversity of Tulsa - 35 followersAmerican University- 266 followersAuburn University - 293 followersMarquette University - 162 followersSUNY ESF - N/AUniversity of Denver - 105 followersUniversity of Vermont - 163 followersDrexel University - 156 followersStevens Institute of Technology Placement - 49 followersBinghamton University (SUNY) - 82 followersMiami University - 241 followersSaint Louis University - 9 followersUniversity of Missouri-Columbia - 185 followersClark University - 30 followersUniversity of Colorado Boulder - 255 followersUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst - 265 followersIowa State University - 114 followersTexas Christian University - 34 followersUniversity of California, Riverside - 279 followersUniversity of San Diego - 59 followersFlorida State University - 453 followers

In short:Visionary Departmental and Research leadership, investing in the field as early as 1965Visionary University-level leadership, which greatly valued Computer Science and the AI, Robotics and Network Security subdisciplines in particular. This seems obvious now in hindsight, but certainly didn’t to many in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.Combining the above, CMU has generally been out front in valuing the academics involved in the computing fields much earlier than many institutions and being willing to invest early.This has been made manifest in things like:CMU was one of the first nodes on ARPANET and thus the Internet which followedCMU researchers earned a very early Nobel Prize in AI (Simon and Newell) and lots of Turing and other Awards (the Turing Award is computing’s “Nobel Prize”)First university-wide high-speed computer network (Andrew)Academic leadership and high value placed has led to great recruitingFirst freshman-level Computer Science CourseArguably world’s first university-level School of Computer ScienceHigh levels of DARPA and corporate research funding for things like self-driving cars, embedded systems work, network security, distributed databases, graphics, speech to text and moreMach microkernel project, which formed the basis of NeXT and in turn OSX (CMU was one of the first investors in NeXT), led by Rick Rashid who later became Head of Research for MicrosoftPittsburgh’s industrial focus helped with advancements in Robotics and Materials ScienceProximity (at least compared to Stanford and MIT) to Bell Labs, major Defense Department projects and moreEarly investments into research in both Robotics and Network Security, which each became big disciplines on their ownARPANET; early implementation of TCP/IP and precursor to the Internet (note CMU’s PDP-10 machines in roughly the center of the diagram):Here’s a much more detailed answer, lifted verbatim from A history of SCS:A history of CMU’s School of Computer Science (and CS Department Prior)For an expanded history of the School of Computer Science and its predecessors at CMU, read "Institutional Memories" in the Summer 2014 issue of The Link magazine.In 2014, the School of Computer Science celebrated its 25th year as a stand-alone college within Carnegie Mellon University. It was arguably the first college devoted solely to computer science in the United States, and a model for others that followed. But CMU’s computer science era begins much earlier—in 1956, with the arrival of an IBM 650 computer on the campus of what was then known as Carnegie Institute of Technology. The IBM 650 had magnetic-drum memory and a processing speed of approximately 60 instructions per second. Herb Simon (H’90), associate dean of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration—now known as CMU’s Tepper School of Business—established Carnegie Tech’s first Computation Center with the help of its first director, Alan Perlis (S’42).First freshman-level computer science courseIn 1956 and 1957, Simon, Allen Newell (IA’57) and Cliff Shaw of RAND designed the Logic Theorist, a computer program that could develop proofs for theorems in much the same way a human would work. They also developed linked-list data structures, the foundation of computer programming. Perlis, Simon and Newell are credited with defining the term “computer science” as “the theory and design of computers,” as well as (in Newell’s words) “the study of the phenomena arising from them.” In 1958, Perlis began teaching the first freshman-level computer programming course in the United States at Carnegie Tech.Computer science Ph.D. program createdIn 1961, the Computation Center and its newest computer, a Bendix G-20, were moved to recently completed Scaife Hall. That same year, Carnegie Tech created an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program called Systems and Communications Sciences, combining elements of computer science, mathematics, psychology, business and electrical engineering. The university’s first computer science Ph.D.s were graduates of this program.Computer Science Department establishedIn 1965, Carnegie Tech established its Computer Science Department, or CSD, with a $5 million grant from the R.K. Mellon Foundation. Perlis was the first department head. There were no undergraduates; only Ph.D. students were admitted, and the department’s focus was on research, much of it funded by the federal government through the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. In 1967, Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the nearby Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie-Mellon University. The Department of Computer Science moved into the newly created Mellon Institute of Science, later renamed Mellon College of Science, or MCS. Future SCS dean Raj Reddy joined the CSD in 1969 after three years as an assistant professor at Stanford. He brought with him research in speech, language and computer vision. But in 1970 and 1971, the new Computer Science Department faced its first crisis, as half of its tenured faculty members—including department head Perlis—left for other universities. Joe Traub was recruited from Bell Labs to CMU to become the new department head.Multi-processor machines emergeCSD emerged from the brief crisis as a highly agile, interdisciplinary entity, with many new faculty members taking joint appointments with other CMU departments. Several large projects emerged in the Computer Science Department, including C.mmp, the first shared-memory multiprocessor computer, with 16 processing units, and Cm*, a 50-processor computer. These computers were the forerunners of today’s ubiquitous multi-core desktops and laptops.Turing Awards and a Nobel PrizeIn 1975, Simon and Newell were awarded the A.M. Turing Award for their work in artificial intelligence. (As of 2014, 12 CMU alumni or faculty have been awarded Turings, sometimes considered the Nobel Prize of computing.) Three years later, Simon received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on decision-making theory. As the 1970s progressed, Newell became interested in human-computer interaction, and began a long relationship with Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, which released the Xerox Alto in 1973. Considered a forerunner to many of the computing environments that followed, Alto featured a graphical-user interface and was among the first commercially available workstations controlled with a mouse. Inspired by Alto, Reddy launched a drive for development of CMU’s own “three-M” machine—a personal workstation with a megabyte of memory, a megapixel display and at least one million instructions per second of processing power.Launching a Robotics InstituteIn 1979, an executive at Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse Electric Corp., Tom Murrin, collaborated with Jordan and Reddy to create the Robotics Institute, with Reddy as its first director. By 1982, the Computer Science Department included more than 30 faculty members and 100 graduate students.The best-wired campus in the worldWorking with IBM in the early 1980s, the university and the Computer Science Department established another new research frontier: Development of a high-speed computer network that would reach virtually every room on campus, along with a GUI-based computing environment, and providing networked PCs or workstations for 7,000 students, faculty members and employees. Called the Andrew Project, it turned Carnegie Mellon into the best-connected, most-wired university in the world—a process Newell called “greening up the campus with computer science.” CMU also became home to a new Software Engineering Institute, funded by the Defense Department, to study computer security and develop best practices in the design of operating systems. Between 1982 and 1985, the amount of sponsored research in the Computer Science Department doubled, from $7.2 million to $15.3 million—more than the other four departments in the Mellon College of Science combined.A “school of computer science” is proposedFeeling that CSD’s needs were inadequately represented in MCS, CSD head A. Nico Habermann and then-CMU provost Angel Jordan in 1986 wrote a white paper proposing the creation of “a School of Computer Science.” Responding to concerns from the faculty that the change might be taking place too quickly, the university first established a free-floating Department of Computer Science. The experiment, which lasted two years, was an unqualified success. Separately, and also in 1986, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center was created as a joint effort between CMU, the University of Pittsburgh and Westinghouse Electric Corp.SCS is officially formedCMU’s Faculty Senate in the fall of 1988 agreed to President Richard Cyert’s plan to elevate the Department of Computer Science to college status. In addition to the Computer Science Department, SCS also incorporated the Robotics Institute, the Center for Machine Translation, and researchers from the Information Technology Center, which had developed Andrew. On Dec. 13, 1988, Cyert (H’89) told faculty and staff that Habermann had been appointed CMU’s first Dean of Computer Science, effective Dec. 1, and that the School of Computer Science would soon begin operations. SCS made its formal debut on Dec. 22, 1988, with a reception in the Wherrett Room of Skibo Hall, CMU’s student union. The official announcement of CMU’s new “graduate School of Computer Science” was made Jan. 3, 1989.Undergraduate degrees beginFor several years, undergraduates interested in computer science pursued an “applied math/CS” bachelor’s degree offered by the Mathematics Department. CSD professor Mary Shaw (CS’72) led CMU’s first effort to design an undergraduate curriculum solely in computer science. She and her colleagues were guided by the Carnegie Plan—guidelines established in 1938 under Carnegie Tech President Robert Doherty (A’40, E’48, H’50), outlining the principles of a sound professional education. Drawing on Shaw’s plan and also on the work of other faculty members, an undergraduate program in computer science was created during the 1989-90 academic year. Seven CS majors were admitted to the program as sophomores. Another 73 undergraduates were admitted in 1990–91. By 1995, there were 401 undergraduates in the School of Computer Science; in fall 2013, more than 600 undergraduates made up about 37 percent of student enrollment at SCS, along with more than 600 master’s degree students.New departments, new areas of studyAlong the way, the Center for Machine Translation became the Language Technologies Institute, and other new departments were formed, including the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (1993), the Institute for Software Research (1999), the Machine Learning Department (2006) and the Ray and Stephanie Lane Center for Computational Biology (2009). SCS’s seven degree-granting departments draw faculty and students from a wide variety of disciplines, including engineering, mathematics, social sciences, linguistics and design.Committed to extending our founders’ visionThe School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University enters its second quarter century as a world-leading educational and research institution, embracing all facets of computing. Its graduate programs are consisted ranked with the best in the world by a leading U.S. magazine, while its undergraduate programs are also rated the best in the U.S. by corporate recruiters. In 2013, SCS had 284 faculty members and a total student enrollment of nearly 1,700, including undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students, and conducted $124 million in research. Indeed, by itself, the Robotics Institute is the largest university robotics research group in the world, with more than 500 people and more than 100 ongoing research projects. A half-century ago, Perlis, Simon and Newell outlined a vision for computer science. The School of Computer Science at CMU remains committed to continuing and extending their vision in the context of big data and connected computing in the 21st century.

I haven't attended any of these programs, but have been considering returning to graduate school for a while (for IxD) and have done a lot of research regarding the programs available.Top programs in US (in random order):School of Visual Arts (NY) -- masters in interaction designhttp://interactiondesign.sva.edu/pros? -- amazing faculty, location, great school for arts/design reputation, career prospects are really good since program is small & faculty are all working in the field, newish program with a lot of excitement for improvement each yearcons? -- small (so likely hard to get into, though I haven't tried yet), curriculum is set (ie no electives), arts school so lacking tech focus, living in NY during grad school is expensive, newish program so less deep alumni connections in industry (vs Carnegie Mellon esp), costCarnegie Mellon (PA) -- masters in interaction design OR masters in HCIhttp://www.design.cmu.edu/show_program.php?s=2&t=3pros? there are actually four(!!) different UX related masters programs to choose from, 3 in the design school (IxD, Communication Design, Tangible Interaction Design) and one in the computer school (see HCI programs listed separately below). small program, has longest history in field, very well respected overall as institution in both tech & art/design, pittsburgh is an affordable grad school town, lots of connections in industry across the country, great faculty (though location does limit working faculty compared to SVA), flexibility in electives, can take courses in tech/design to fill out where you're weak.cons? pittsburgh (unless you love pittsburgh), really hard to get into, costIndiana University -- masters in HCID (HCI but with strong focus on design)http://www.soic.indiana.edu/graduate/programs/hcid/pros? strong program in large academic/research institution, tight-knit community. ability to take grad level courses elsewhere in university. HCI degree w/ design focus. bloomington is surprisingly nice town & affordable for grad school, they have pretty good reputation outside of the midwest for internship placement / jobs. cost (most affordable of all programs, even out of state), "HCI" degree might be more widely recognized, even though this degree seems to be an IxD degree.cons? less "working faculty," still not as good as CMU for connections/reputation. found most of the students there are from indiana or midwest.=============================Dave Malouf adds the following US programs that have IxD or similar programs as well...Univ of Kansas - IxDIllinois Inst. of Technolog/Institute of Design - Masters in DesignParsons School of Design (both Design & Technology and Transdisciplinary Design)NYU's ITP Program=============================Some other options...non-degreeAustin Center for Design 1 year program(started by John Kolko of Frog Design, focuses on using design to solve social/cultural problems.)http://www.austincenterfordesign.com/HCI(a lot more options here, see What are the best graduate programs for HCI in the United States and Europe? What schools have the best research output? What schools have the pioneers of the field/great advisers in HCI? What schools have the best PhD program? Masters program?)Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Michigan, DePaul, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, MIT, UW, Irvine, Stanford, etcInternational...Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (1 yr certificate)Umeå Institute of DesignMalmö, Sweden, has a 2 year Masters in IxDRCA (Royal College of Art)TU Delft Interaction DesignDave Malouf adds these additional European schools I forgot...PottsdamDomus AcademyUtrechtOslo School of Architecture & Design