Great explaination of the new release figure method. As for quota setting, with the old method, NPC rec that it be done after acceptance to the second invitaional round. That was a different time for every campus. If you have four nights of recruitment - Open House/Welcome Night, Philanthropy, Skit, Pref - then your second invite round would be Skit night. You then took the number of women that accepted invites to Skit and divided that by the number of chapters.
Anyone that dropped out after accepting those invites or dropped out/got no invites between then and Pref - was still figured into quota. Once it was set you were stuck with it. For two years the University I worked with had a problem with women dropping out after quota had been set. We had an entire new member class drop out both years. The next year was a little better - only half a new member class withdrew after quota was set. So in these cases it was impossible for every group to reach quota through formal recruitment.
The new form of setting quota does not set it until all women have signed bid cards.
Quota-Range is the number given to chapters of what quota would be if set at that time. This is taken into account when determining how many each chapter can invite back to each round. In regards to your bid list, you use the lower number for your first list. So if quota range is 42-45, your first list would be 42 - then in order of preference. Bid match is then run using 42, 43, 44 & 45 as quota. They look at lot of things to determine which to set it at: which number gave the most PNM's their 1st choice; which made for the most no bids; which had the most chapters fill quota etc. and (and this is really simplified) they pick the one that fills the most of their criteria (of which there is much more than I listed). The idea is for it to be a win-win for all involved.