HOW many classmates?/ Are there an equal number of students in each house?

[Robert Jones]

No: HPFGUIDX 91431

Some more thoughts on the number of students:

(1) I saw an episode of "Liberty Kids" a few weeks back -- a cartoon 
show in USA about the American Revolution.  If you believe that 
show, George Washington only had about two dozen soldiers at Valley 
Forge.  I guess the animators didn't want to bother drawing 
thousands of soldiers.  And JKR might be the same: she doesn't want 
to clutter up the story by mentioning every name in the Sorting Hat 
ceremoney or having to give each student some lines by having Harry 
interact with every student in his class.  Of course, this makes one 
limitation on JKR: it would now be hard to try to introduce any new 
Gryffindors in Harry's class -- like reading in Book 6 "Harry said 
hello to Tom Jones, a Gryffindor in his class that he hadn't noticed 
for five years."

(2) If the Sorting Hat has to sort 120 to 150 students each year, 
the ceremony is going to take a really long time.  If each student 
takes an average of only half a minute to have their name called, go 
to the chair, pick up the hat, put it on, have the Sort Hat do 
whatever it does, take off the hat, put it down, and leave, then the 
ceremony would take two hours.  I don't think I could sit through 
that, and I'm not an 11 or 12 year old kid.