They spend that time being observed by the sisters who are trying to decide if they want them or not. It takes a while to decide if taking a weakling like Elin or Daigian is offset by her mental abilities.

I'm not sure I would call this a matter of deciding, really, so much as taking the time to shape the personality of those women.

The picture I see is this:

When a woman has great strength potential, the powers at the Tower just can't wait to get that woman in their ranks. A strong woman always end up wielding power within the Tower (officially or personally), and the Ajahs are eager for this increase in influence. Having a Moiraine, and Elaida in your ranks count, even more getting a Nynaeve, Cadsuane, Egwene etc.

The Ajahs are always in a power struggle against one another and aren't ready to wait for those women, and it appears their training is somewhat sped up (the reasonning must be that their future Ajah will have all the time it needs to complete their education after they joined them). They are trained in the OP, and given the basic non OP curriculum for novices and the basic shaping of their attitude, and as much as they can get of an Accepted education.


That's the sort of training sisters like Moiraine and Siuan got. Six years. More than enough to learn the OP, enough to develop the right attitude, and a basic "advanced" education (that Moiraine basically had as a noble and daughter of scholars, incidentally. Siuan, not quite - but she had many many years ahead to get the knowledge and skills she'd need to reach her potential)

Middling sisters are a different case. They aren't as attractive in OP terms and they will rise through the hierarchy only with many years in some instances (that is, they may eventually be chosen as Sitters or in other capacities like Librarians, or the other more obscure official positions on the various councils like the WT bank, the council that administrate the city etc.), They are given a slower paced, "normal" training and education. The Ajah that ought to get those women still probably try to influence the MON to raise them earlier than later (teachers from other Ajah might push the other way), because at middling strength, how many years you spent as novice/accepted count in establishing where you stand among all the other middling sisters.

Then come the weaklings. The Tower don't want to turn the Daigian's away, the decline in numbers alone compels them to keep any woman they can make a proper Aes Sedai of. A too weak Red, a took weak Blue or Green still increases the weight of the Ajah. What the Aes Sedai don't want are sisters who cannot project the proper image of an Aes Sedai as the Tower defines it. Strength itself isn't an issue outside the sisterhood, no one knows or should know how strong a sister is. That information is for Aes Sedai and Aes Sedai alone.

These women don't have the self-confidence being petted about your great strength and OP skills from day one gives the strongest novices and accepted (like the wondergirls, with everyone fawning over them...), and the strongest sisters (as most of the deciders in the WT are... Siuan, Elaida, the Sitters, the AH...) are prejudiced that strength of character goes hand in hand in a natural way with strength in the OP. Those prejudices would shape how they look at those weaker women, make them feel about themselves and how they judge them (incl. if they're strong enough to face the Accepted test yet or not). The training of the weaker women is so long because for them the sisters don't overlook the details that suggest they may not have what it takes yet to act like a sister (a personality they ironically don't really encourage them to develop, at least if we look at the way Daigian was treated by sisters. It must take a fairly strong personality and will, probably much stronger than the average sisters', to make it when you're so weak - otherwise you get broken). The sisters rather look at every little sign that tells them those women can't yet be Aes Sedai, and as it happens it reaches the point where these women have to spend decades among AS before they're judged competent enough to act like a "proper" sister. Do an Ajah like the Grey frown on having sisters they judge too weak in the OP? I seriously doubt it's a big issue. They will just get the worst work assignements, because the strong bullies get all the good jobs (and it's like that in all Ajahs). The huge number of Reds alone suggest strongly even they don't turn down anyone based on their strength. They want to shape as many sisters as possible in their way of thinking, they don't care if they get countless Reds who probably aren't strong enough to deal safely with male channellers - most Reds won't have to in their entire life anyway!

The women who get thrown out seem to be of any strength, and the primary factor for throwing them out seems to be that their personality or attitude is hopeless. The sisters will accept a Daigian, who can act as full of herself and as full of reserved and calm arrogance, as pretentious and all-knowing as the strongest sister when she's among non-channellers. It just took her decades to show enough of that self-confidence to be raised, though.

An Else Grinwell they have no use for, however.

There seems to be completely different worldviews of Aes Sedai in the AOL versus now. In the AOL, it appears the channelling skills were paramount (it's not their raw strength the Forskaken laugh at show much, it's their pathetic skills and knowledge of the OP that in their eyes are barely trained. An AOL Daigian could almost certainly outperform any of today's AS in channelling. Of course, there also were plenty of angreal to offset weak strength... A novice of Daigian's strength don't go far in channelling - there's just so much of the known weaves she cannot perform because she's too weak and I suspect in the AOL women like her were simply issued a personal angreal when they reached the point the weaves they had to learn required more strength than they had...

In the third age, however, the WT doesn't care all that much for channelling skills, because for the most part they will rarely be used, and even more rarely to serve people outside the Tower. What the AS are looking for are women who project the right aura of authority and competence (and they believe women strong in the OP have it naturally, the others must be shaped harder and longer).

Finally about Daigian and Elin specifically. Their extra long training may also have had a lot to do with the Ajahs they were destined for. I'm not so sure the less scholarly Ajahs would have let them stew so long before pushing to raise them. The White and Brown just didn't see the rush - even raised women like them would still spend decades studying, so best let them do that and let them shape their character as much as possible before they join their Ajah.