  In this paper I combine the results of a set of population synthesis models
with simple Montecarlo simulations of stochastic effects in the number of stars
occupying sparsely populated stellar evolutionary phases, to show that the
scatter observed in the magnitudes and colors of LMC and NGC 7252 star clusters
can be understood in the framework of current stellar evolution theory, without
the need to introduce ad-hoc corrections (e.g. artificially increasing the
number of AGB stars).
