Illustration of night owls and social butterflies

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University Insights: Night owls and social butterflies

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Published on October 14, 2015

Welcome to the first post in our Dropbox University Insights series. In these posts, we’ll take aggregated usage data* from Dropbox users at universities around the world, and surface interesting trends. Night owls We all know those students who are prone to pulling all-nighters — in fact, maybe you’re one of those students. Well, it turns out you’re not alone. By looking at all universities with students using Dropbox late on weeknights — between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am in the school’s local time — we identified the top 5 universities in every region getting work done in the wee hours:
  • Africa: American University in Cairo (Egypt)
  • Americas: Universidad de Concepción (Chile)
  • Asia: Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (South Korea)
  • Europe: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
  • Oceania: Monash University (Australia)
Although the US didn’t make the global top 5, we did notice that the American school with the most night owls is Princeton University — with Carnegie Mellon coming in a close second. A Korean school took the top spot for the Asian region, and Japan has the most schools where over 40% of active Dropbox users are night owls. Social butterflies College is a time for learning, growth, inspiration — and a lot of hard work. We looked at the typical working patterns across universities, and found a lot of users sign off of Dropbox on weekend evenings. Some might be partying it up, others might be taking time to relax and recharge — either way, Dropbox usage is quiet at these universities on Friday and Saturday nights. Below are the top schools per region where the highest percentage of their weekend users stop using Dropbox on weekend nights:
  • Africa: University of Cape Town (South Africa)
  • Americas: University of New Mexico (USA)
  • Asia: Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
  • Europe: Wageningen University & Research Centre (Netherlands)
  • Oceania: Queensland University of Technology (Australia)
Some additional fun facts: University of New Mexico won for the US region, and the southern United States had great representation in the overall social butterflies list — 11 of the global top 25. And the countries with the most representation outside of North America are the Netherlands and Australia (6 and 4 schools with >60% social butterflies, respectively). Ever wondered which universities are the most artistic or techy? We have too. Stay tuned for next week’s post in the Dropbox University Insights series! In the meantime, if you’re a university student, sign up for Campus Cup and earn extra space. *Data from September 2014 — August 2015