Case Study: University of Virginia achieves insights into student success with Neo4j

University of Virginia - Customer Case Study

Forrest Swope, Manager of Data Operations at the University of Virginia, faced a data challenge: understanding why some community college transfer students thrive while others struggle. The needed insights were buried across roughly 50 relational databases and involved complex, meaning-rich relationships—things that rigid, table-based systems couldn’t easily expose or let the team explore without predefining every question.

UVA moved to Neo4j graph technology to join those disparate data sources into a single graph that captures adjacency and the character of relationships. That approach lets analysts run exploratory queries to surface patterns distinguishing successful from struggling students, helping the university design targeted interventions and better student-support strategies.

University of Virginia

Forrest Swope

Manager of Data Operations