This was the geographic breakdown for the class of 2025 with NC being #1 and VA #5 and a high percentage of northeast states.
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Elon and College of Charleston have both become “hot” schools in the past 10-15 years.
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Yeah, that’s exactly flipped from a UNC system school where no more than 18% of students can be OOS and 82% are going to be from NC.
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Yes. And according to Scoir no one from my NJ high school has been accepted to UNC CH since at least 2004, including applicants with perfect test scores and grades. The high cost of Rutgers for in-state students means many NJ kids go elsewhere. We always have a few kids at Duke and Wake Forest and quite a few at Elon.
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Simply comparing tuition, Elon is competitive at $41,734 a year, as compared to CNU OOS tuition at $28,663 a year. (CNU in-state tuition is $15,425 a year.)
(I do wonder when I shifted over to saying tuition is “only” $15,425 for in-state rates. 
)
For us it wasn’t even the cost of Rutgers. The lack of a cohesive campus, the reputation for administration being difficult to navigate, and the response to application problems (can’t call, have to email and wait 2 days) made it unattractive. The info sessions and tours were lackluster.
I can’t believe how responsive Elon has been for my incoming student! D called for some issues and got info very quickly. They immediately were able to help with special housing, even though the deadline had passed, coordinating 2 departments to get her what she needs and in her preferred LLC. I called when I accidentally overpaid tuition and they fixed it. They answered a dorm room question and emailed window measurements. Who even needs window measurements? 
Everything has been so smooth that I’m afraid to talk about it.
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Yeah, in-state tuition only for UNC Chapel Hill is $7,020; total cost of attendance (housing, meal plan, fees, books, incidentals) is $25,258 for in-state. Hard for Elon to compete with that. All the other UNC system schools like NC State, Appalachian State, UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Asheville, UNC-Charlotte are cheaper than UNC Chapel Hill. Plus they are all in more attractive cities than Elon/Burlington. So Elon made the smart move to prioritize OOS kids.
It’s a good school. Not my kids’ vibe, but it’s a solid good school and certainly attractive to a lot of families.
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It has targeted a real niche of “donut hole” upper middle class families who would be full pay generally but appreciate the lower cost and high service.
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I think it’s echoing what happened with Muhlenberg a decade ago… M was a school folks had kinda sorta heard of in the Northeast and then all of a sudden, it became the “it” college for the kids who couldn’t get in to Brandeis, would have loved Villanova but didn’t want a Catholic school, didn’t want single sex so Smith was out (or was male); wanted lots of music performance opportunities but not a conservatory; thought Middlebury was both too remote and too intense academically. And there was Muhlenberg to dot the I’s and cross the T’s!
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This is what we found. My son is a high school Junior who is just starting to look at schools. He had questions about music classes at Elon as a non-major and non-musician. He put his question in the pop up window on Elon’s website. 15 minutes later, he got a message from an Elon student full of great info and offering to zoom with him. So helpful.
S24 is our third child to go through the college process, and we’ve asked a lot of questions and sent a ton of emails. Many went unanswered. One school sent info about social events when the student had asked about historical research. Another school put the wrong address in a reminder email for a tour, leading us to spend 45 minutes searching the campus in 90 degree heat while on hold with the university phone system. When I wrote a very polite email to admissions so they could correct this for future families, I got no response. Elon was a breath of fresh air in this way!
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That’s nice to hear!
D reached out to the band director before deciding where to attend and he did a zoom call with her.
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We’re on the bubble for considering Elon; I don’t want to make this political but thinking of our Asian son reading an article about racism in Graham (in 2020 and beyond) with the Alamance county sheriff was concerning. In a Small Town, a Battle for Racial Justice Confronts a Bloody Past and an Uncertain Future — ProPublica
I’m sure Elon itself is somewhat of a bubble and I doubt there are any issues on campus itself.
That said, to those currently attending or with kids attending, is diversity increasing there in the student body?
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My kid’s roommate was Asian ( not Asian-American). She enjoyed Elon very much and didnt have any issues, but Elon is similar to LACs in having low Asian-American representation, though committed to improving it.
I am local. Not in Alamance Co, but in the neighboring county and have many friends in Alamance. The sheriff is terrible. He’s mainly racist against black people and Latinos. I haven’t heard about any anti-Asian sentiment. It definitely is the worst in Graham which is on the other side of Burlington from Elon. There is a confederate statue in Graham which has been the flashpoint for protests and counter protests, but most of that was pre-COVID. There were some protests after George Floyd, too, but the main bit was before that after Charlottesville when UNC-Chapel Hill was also wrestling with tearing down their confederate statue (which they did).
Neighboring Orange County, where I live, is home to UNC-Chapel Hill and is super liberal. I think some of the Elon kids come down Chapel Hill to Franklin Street when they want to venture out away from Elon. It’s just about 40 minutes away. Greensboro is even closer and it’s a pretty funky diverse city, especially around UNC-Greensboro.
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One of Elon’s institutional goals is to increase diversity. They are working on it, but numbers are still low compared to colleges in larger cities, for sure. Yes, campus is a bubble, but, there were flare-ups when racial tensions in the country were high, where local (I assume) residents were driving around the public streets on campus with a confederate flag and shouting anti-black racial slurs. The university took this very seriously and worked with local law enforcement. Elon U also had what I consider (note I am white) to be a robust reaction to the nationwide racial discussions of the time, with many new diversity support and initiatives put in place. Elon News Network, the very excellent student news source, would be a good place to read about those events and what the school put in place as well as Elon website itself, the school has an excellent, exhaustive web site.
I did read that there is someone running to oppose that racist sheriff, and Elon students CAN register to vote as locals…something I am strongly encouraging my son to do.
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Elon got hot in our area in suburban North Jersey around seven or eight years. The main reasons I believe it was a less competitive and or less expensive alternative to other schools in the region. i.e., Wake, Richmond, William Mary, UVA, Davidson,
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We met one student who had chosen Elon over UVA and Wake. Some students prefer it for various reasons.
I work at a Southern California private school and while we’ve had some kids apply to Elon over the years, we’ve never had anyone attend. We have had kids attend UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Duke, Davidson, and High Point. But never Elon.
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We visited Elon with our son about four years ago and liked it very much. He applied to it as a safety but ended up at one of the more competitive schools I listed above.
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