Polychromatic grand unification

The possibility of achieving a gauge coupling grand unification by increasing the QCD degrees of freedom at higher energies is investigated. When confronted with precision low-energy data, the generic weak-mixing angle relation sin^2(theta_W) = N/2(N+1) requires N=7 colors at the GUT scale M_U ~ 10^17 GeV. With the exclusive addition of light Higgs doublets to the standard model particle content, such a unification may also occur if N=5 at M_U ~ 10^16 GeV. Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures