# of Students

[milz]

No: HPFGUIDX 3873

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, mmarth at p... wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, Amanda Lewanski <editor at t...> 
wrote:
> > Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer wrote:
> > 
> > > Uh . . . there are only 4 Houses per year, so that's 35
students 
> per
> > > House per year under the 1000 students total numbers.  Why would
> > > Gryffindor only get 8 if they should have closer to 35?  That's 
> *way*
> > > off in my mind.
> > 
> > Well, I forgot who did that nice discussion, but I agree that the 
> wizarding
> > world was apparently a bit, um, depleted by Voldemort, which is 
one 
> reason.
> > Another is that I always got the impression that Hogwarts took
the 
> magically
> > gifted, however many there were that filled the bill. The number 
of 
> gifted
> > Muggles and the number of wizard kids born in any given year will 
> vary. Why
> > should class size be regular? Harry's year might be a small one, 
> other years
> > might be larger, the total's around 1000.
> > 
> > Make sense?
> > 
> > --Amanda
> 
> 
> I really wonder if JKR ever thought there would be so many of us 
> picking apart the book as we do especially we it comes to what some 
> may consider minor details.  
> 
> Martha

Rowling said there are 1000 students at Hogwarts, however she does
not 
state how those students are divided among the houses or the 
years/grade levels.

Let's assume that the 1000 are divided evenly among the 4 houses.
Then 
each house would have 250 students (1000 divided by 4). 

There are 7 years/grade levels at Hogwarts. Assuming that the 1000
are 
evenly divided among the 7 years/grade levels, then each  year/grade 
level would have 142.8 students (let's round that number up to 143, 
since you can't have 0.8 of a student). Or 1000 divided by 7. 

Assuming the 1000 are evenly divided, per house per year/grade level, 
there are 35.7 students (or 36 students). Or 1000 divided by 4 (the 
number of houses) divided by 7 (the number of years/grade levels). 

The 1000 could *possibly* be divided equally among the years/grade 
levels *if* Hogwarts admits 143 students per year. That might
seem "a lot", but consider they recruit all these children from all 
over the UK. Furthermore, it almost solves the problem about where 
wizards like Ernie from the Knight Bus went to school. (It also makes 
me wonder what is the exact proportion of Muggles to Wizarding Folk
in 
the population!)

IMO, I don't believe the 1000 students are evenly distributed among 
the houses. Why? The Sorting Hat system seems to be based more on 
quality than quantity. The Sorting Hat examines every student's  
character and sorts them to whichever house best suits the student. 
IOW, if there are more hard-workers in a particular year, then there 
would be more Hufflepuffs. So it's entirely possible that there are 
only 5 Gryffindor boys in Harry's year, because these 5 were the only 
ones the Hat could match to Gryffindor, IMO. 

The sorting process probably does take a quite a bit of time. Ron was 
impatient to get the ceremony over with in GoF. But in SS/PS, the 
Sorting Hat sometimes decided quickly (Malfoy barely had the hat on 
his head and the Hat called out "Slytherin!") or it took a while to 
sort (the Hat took a "long time" with Neville and about a minute with 
Dean or Seamus)

:- ) Milz