Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/170

166 median age of graduation of all students for the decade. It will be noticed that its position remains absolutely unchanged. Perhaps the most noticeable exhibition presented by this plate is the pushing of the great bulk of graduates in the last decade into the comparatively narrow compass of the years 20-24, and the consequent great reduction of the numbers graduating above or below these limits as compared with the earlier decade.

One further observation is worth making: At first sight it appears that the mode—the year in which the largest number graduates—is in

the first decade, the twenty-first year; while in the second decade this has been pushed up, and is now the twenty-second. In this there are two matters of significance. First, while the mode in the first decade is 21, the percentage here is still less than it is in the same year in the next decade, where the mode appears as 22; secondly, the reduction of the percentages in the years below the twenty-second in the second decade is largely due to the fact that in the first decade two or three colleges which have a high median age of graduation have in this decade