Mean and Median Age of Students
STUDENT DEMOGRAPHICS
Mean
Median
32
30
Age
28
26
24
22
20
Age
Semester
Fall 2003
Spring 2004
Fall 2004
Spring 2005
Fall 2005
Spring 2006
Fall 2006
Spring 2007
Fall 2007
Spring 2008
Fall 2008
Spring 2009
Fall 2009
Spring 2010
Fall 2010
Spring 2011
Fall 2011
Spring 2012
Fall 2012
Spring 2013
Fall 2013
Spring 2014
Fall 2014
Spring 2015
Mean
29.8
30.2
29.6
30.1
29.7
30.4
30.0
30.5
30.3
31.0
30.1
30.2
30.0
30.1
30.0
30.1
29.7
30.0
29.0
29.1
29.2
29.4
29.1
29.3
Median
24
25
24
24
24
24
24
24
24
25
24
24
24
24
24
24
24
24
23
24
23
24
23
23
Mode
18
19
19
19
18
19
18
19
18
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
20
19
19
Source: DW-SQL Research Data Warehouse (Enroll::Student)
2014-15 Headcount by Age
2500
Headcount
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Age
The median age is lower than the mean age because there are relatively few older students, but the range
of older students' ages is very great, causing the mean age to be substantially higher than the median age.
The median indicates that half our students are 24 or younger and half were 24 or older (since Fall 2008).
The median is the preferred measure of central tendency for highly skewed distributions such as this.
Mode is the most frequently occurring age.