Minty new A license here of extremely similar size to the discussion at hand. My instructor recently cleared me to fly a 210 at 1.1 and suggested I order a 190 canopy that would put me at 1.2 in a few months when it comes in. After some initial unease I am settling into comfortable with that suggestion. I think the unease came more from the strong emphasis on wing loading in discussions like this when not every case is the same in other respects. I understand a higher wing loading matters less for a "big guy" like me or the example than it does for an average sized or smaller person. So the decision for me to fly at 1.1 or 1.2 is probably more analogous to a smaller person deciding to go to 0.9 or 1.0, and nobody would bat an eye at that. I also have progressed stepwise down from 300. Each of those changes affected my canopy characteristics comparably to the way the next step or two will. And not all students learn at the same rate. I trust my instructors to evaluate my individual readiness to progress over a chart and the opinions of strangers. TLDR: individual circumstances come into play too much for one answer to fit all cases. There may be examples that are harder to justify than others, and a 170 for a 235 exit weight certainly raises concerns for me, but it's still a case-by-case evaluation.
