Another question I have, is if people can begin their team initiations before four whole members are chosen? Sort of like how Ozpin 'paired' people up, who were later joined together based on the pieces each pair had chosen?
I think what you mean is do you go into an initiation thread not knowing your team, and I don't think that's going to happen. The trend I've is you coordinate what your team is ahead of time, then begin an initiation with those four people. You won't have to deal with a large number of people in a thread, and things will move quicker. Your character doesn't have to know they're teammates going in, they can find them mid mission ala the show, but you'll only have the story following the four of you.
As for partners and leaders, no one chooses for you. ASPN (my team) discussed among ourselves who would partner with who. After our initiation we voted on a leader based on the actions that happened in the initiation.
But that's an aside. VLPS, the only team 1)outside Beacon 2)in Shade, is made up of the members of ASPN. VLPS is an almost literal sister team to ASPN. We joke we're the founding fathers of Shade since we're the only ones there, but we also sort of are.
That said, we're trying to build up Shade a bit and we thought about how Vacuo is a rough and tumble country where you have to be strong to survive and how Shade is the only source of Law and Order in the country. Playing with those thoughts, we theorized that you're expected to be able to complete a rookie mission on entry to Shade. Only the strong make it here. It also serves as a way to reign in some of the criminal elements before they become proper problems for the upperclassmen.
That's the jist. Figured you'd want to know if your character is headed to Shade, which I'm under the impress he is. =) You can check out VLPS's threads in Everywhere Else (they stand out, being the only threads there) or shoot me a pm if you want to hear some more stuff.
Congrats on getting start though!