It's an awesome tool for academy. I've found myself using it all the time for my undergrad homework: Everything from finding the inverse of a given matrix to plotting out the results for output to the assignment.
Admittedly I haven't found myself using it much for anything else.
I'm always amazed when I see the "Show Steps" button. You can learn a ton of things by just looking through the steps WA took to arrive at the result of a complicated derivative or integral.
I personally use it for tasks involving Linear Algebra, too, e.g. calculating eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors.
Admittedly I haven't found myself using it much for anything else.