Anyone participated in this before?

I was part of my uni's IHSA team for two years. I did not actually ride in the shows (was not very confident in my abilities at that time, though I was encouraged to try anyway!), but I did help to run a few of them. It's a great opportunity to develop your skills as a rider, IMO, since you get to ride different horses all the time, and some of them can be quite nice!

Outside of the riding, the experience will depend A LOT on your team culture and fellow members. While I made a few very good friends, the overall atmosphere at my school was pretty negative and catty, which resulted in about 1/4 of the team leaving at the same time I did. I sincerely hope and do not believe that every team is like this though! I would suggest sitting in on a few meetings and talking to REGULAR members (as in, not the president/captain) to get a feel for it. :) Also, ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR PRACTICE BARN. When I was on the team, we took our weekly lessons at an eventing barn, and they didn't exactly have a surplus of hunter/eq horses. In a way, it was a valuable experience, but I think we might have accomplished more with a different set of horses. The team has now switched to a regular HJ barn right down the road from the old one.

Awesome, thanks Misa!