The most elegant way is still to do this in the database:

select item, count(*)
from mytable
group by item
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... but you can do the same in Perl by using a hash:

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;
my %count;

my @status = ("Applied", "Enrolled", "Admitted", "Applied", "Enrolled"
+);;

$count{$_}++ for @status;
warn Dumper \%count;
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