This may be a stupid question...

[kayfaith]

That sounds like a great suggestion, DubaiSis! One (big 10) school that I keep coming back to as I list and relist seems like it might fall in that category so yay, potential.

UVA17 "pepe le peu"

EDIT: Would a school that re/colonized the year before fall under this category too? Or would there be no need to possibly balance after one year?

[DubaiSis]

Originally Posted by kayfaith

EDIT: Would a school that re/colonized the year before fall under this category too? Or would there be no need to possibly balance after one year?

I couldn't say for sure, but I think that a very new chapter would be more open to older students than a very well established chapter would. Just to sort of put it in a nutshell, you don't want all of your members to graduate at the same time or you'll have trouble developing stability (socially and financially). So ideally, you'd pledge 25% freshmen, 25% sophomores, 25% juniors and 25% seniors. In reality it never happens this way. A colony would never announce their exact ratios (company secrets you might say), so it probably ends up 50% freshmen, 25% sophomores and 25% juniors and seniors, or maybe even more skewed than that. So if they colonized last year and you would have been a sophomore last year, you're in better shape than if you were a freshman last year. 2-3 years of treating a new chapter with kid gloves and lots of oversight is pretty common, especially for the very large chapters.

I think it's also fair to say that a colony puts even more emphasis on leadership than an established chapter because it's even more important to squeeze every bit of potential out of every last member. You can't coast or rest on your laurels until you have laurels to rest on.