Ron, UCONN is not going to get the invites needed to join the "club". The club has 63 members, and you need 48 votes. The Boston area schools have no reason to vote for UConn, nor the Southern Block, nor the California Block. UCONN does not begin to have the quantity of graduate research needed to get the necessary votes. Also for anyone to be added to the AAU, someone has to be kicked out. Kansas and a handful of smaller institutions are under the review gun that led to the ouster of Nebraska and the voluntary exit of Syracuse.
AAU is just a club whose main thrust now is to aggregate federal research dollars and keep those dollars in those institutions hands. The last two voted in were GT and Boston U. The last two to voted upon and not getting in were NC State and Cincy. NC State missed by one vote in 2010 according to the scuttle. Look at the metrics of GT, Boston U, NC State, and Cincy. Look at the total research dollars delivered by all groups outside the USDA, then look at faculty publishing, patents, and relationships between higher ups and all five major AAU groups - The Big 10 group, the California Group, The Boston Area Group, The NY Group, and the Southerners no one group can vote you in, but a blackball from a single subgroup will keep you out.
Go here to see what you are up against:
http://mup.asu.edu/research_data.html
The most recent tables show for example under total research:
1 - John's Hopkins
28 - GT
50 - VT
51 - Cincy
58 - NC State
63 - Boston U
128 - UConn
Even if you add UConn's total with their medical college they only get to the upper 80's.
Now if you take a second step and divide the dollar level of research by the size of the university, you get a more precise number that identifies the dollars of research per student, per faculty member, etc.
The bottom line is that Kansas, and Brandeis are the two under the gun now. If they slide through, two or three more will take their place, but once the AAU has dropped the next 3-5, there is no-one else that really looks to get the boot. Since AAU has indicated they want to stay around 60 schools and they have 63 or so with two from Canada, there is little room to move up.
Scuttle says VT will get a vote next time around - in about two years. They have a good chance but like the vote with NC State, it will be close.