[bolingbaker]

You've come late to the discussion, but let me offer an answer to your legitimate question. You asked whether a 100-man chapter is inferior to a 200-man chapter. You asked if the 100-man chapter is superior to the 50-man chapter if the 50 men are "the cream".
The answer is that it's less important how many members a chapter has than where it stands vs. its competition. If the leading fraternities - the ones that win in intramurals, have the top campus leaders, date in the top sororities - all have over 100 members, then you cannot compete effectively against that with fifty men.
Ambitious men tend to want to be with others like themselves. Men who want success will be drawn to successful groups. A chapter with more manpower has a much better chance of winning. The large, powerful, successful chapters will fight hard for what you call 'the cream', and they have more weapons to fight with. On a campus where the 100-man chapters dominate, there is no 50-man chapter that can compete consistently over time, much less draw "the cream". What really happens is that they tend to make up reasons for their place in the heirarchy, telling themselves that they "have more brotherhood" than the top groups, or that they "have the cream" or somesuch nonsense. Most likely they'll just turn inward and quit trying altogether. And at the moment they quit caring about the competition, they're out of the game.
This does not mean they cannot have a good fraternity experience. They can return again and again to campus for the rest of their lives and reunite with their friends from the chapter. But it does mean that their experience will forever be marked as an underachievement. It just means that they will never know what it's like to be on top, to compete for the most desired trophies, to move among the top sororities with familiarity. It means, frankly, that the future leaders of business, government, entertainment, the professions, will all be coming back to other fraternities at Homecoming. The top fraternities recruit and produce leaders in far disproportionate numbers to the chapters that are less competitive.
Now, what if you're a 50-man chapter on a campus of 100-man leaders and you want to improve and become one of them. Let me offer you the best advice you will ever get on this subject: 1) ignore what the chapter thinks . They have already convinced themselves that small is good, and you cannot change their minds by talking to them. You must decide to lead. 2) Pledge more guys, A LOT MORE guys. The chapter will never AGREE to go out and recruit enough men to make them competitive, BUT if you orchestrate a large pledge class, the Brothers will congratulate themselves on their success. It's Human nature. You chapter will be energized and enthused by their "success" (that you have created), and all the new guys will bring a welcome infusion of new blood. 3) keep doing this over and over until the chapter changes into a competitor. You'll know you've arrived the day one of the big chapters takes you seriously, or says something that gives you the impression they think you're a rival.
Understand that this can be done fairly quickly if you are committed. It can be done quickly becuse hardly anone knows how the mechanics work.