How do you deal with 60+ new members joining the team?

[Boe]

We have had some large growth in our team recently, not nearly the amount some people are talking about but enough that we became concerned. A few things we tried to do to curb this is to raise the participation fee (we have a system in place to waive the fee due to financial hardships),slowly increasing the amount of minimum requirements and we introduced an essay as part of the application process. We don't turn anyone down due to the essay but it was a good deterrent to only get people who really wanted to be on the team. It worked alright and we've slowly managed to stabilize the size of our team, especially now that our last small graduating class (5 members) has gone.