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harry potter - Do Hogwarts Houses have quotas?


Not a year goes by where we don't see at least one person Sorted into each House, and it's usually a fairly even distribution.


The Sorting Hat doesn't get a chance to study the mind of each child before Sorting, so it can't Sort them relative to each other (top X in smarts go to Ravenclaw, 4 bravest to Gryffindor, etc)


What would happen if a Sorting occurred where all the witches/wizards were extremely intelligent? Would they all get Sorted to Ravenclaw? What if they were all extremely brave? What if none of them were particularly smart or courageous, but they all wanted power?


We see that there's a fairly small number of beds per room in each dorm, would the Hat stop Sorting people into a House if it knew the House had no more beds? If so, could Harry Potter have ended up in Hufflepuff if his last name had been 'Zimmers'?



Answer



It's hard to know whether there are house quotas without being able to compare the Sorting Hat's placements against the total number of students at Hogwarts. We don't know how many students are at Hogwarts or what their house placements are.



And, unfortunately, I think we have to take any proffered number of students at Hogwarts with a grain of salt, no matter the source. J.K. Rowling has ongoing discrepancies in her numbers when asked about it, and she admits she is "horrible at maths." At one point she put forth that there are approximately 1000 students at Hogwarts. If so, it would break down to approximately 250 students per house. There's a short article on how many students there possibly are at Hogwarts here. If we are to trust canon, the number of known students in each house does indeed seem to be evenly distributed.


However, I think, in your scenario, where all the students, or a disproportionate number of students, were suited to one house, then that is where they would go. I interpret what we know from canon to mean that the Sorting Hat sorts on ability, not on available bed space. So, no, there are not quotas based on house placement.


Canon doesn't demonstrate or state exactly how many beds are in each dorm room. The books are from Harry's POV; it may be that we only meet the Gryffindor boys and girls that Harry has the opportunity to interact with or notice; perhaps there are many more Gryffindors that Harry simply never notices or, more likely, mentions. In the article I linked to above, it's postulated that there are approximately 36 students per year, per house, which seems more reasonable, again based on Harry's point of view and what we see in canon (the books, not the movies; the movies show many more students per house than 36).


Neither canon nor J.K. Rowling adequately addresses how many students attend Hogwarts. The only answer we have is J.K. Rowling's estimate of "around 1000" students; however that number doesn't seem to be supported by canon or Harry's POV. In a nutshell, we don't know. Canon suggests an even distribution of house placements, however, regardless of the number of students the Sorting Hat sorts, which does not indicate a quota.


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