<p>ust back from a vacation plus some campus visits in the great heat wave of 2006. Here's my brief review of Elon -- Please bear with me, I'm working from some very stream of consciousness notes.</p>
<p>Elon is located in Elon, NC. Elon (the town) grew up around the university and has the typical "college area" feel. Some bars, some restaurants, convenience stores (including the "Cruze In", a drive through convenience store where you didn't have to leave your car -- I was amazed:)). Basically, all the necessities -- but not much more --were within walking distance. The city of Burlington is about 5 minutes down the road, however, with a lot more shopping and dining options, theatres, bookstores, etc. Also, Greensboro was about 20-30 minutes down the highway. I liked the setup -- "college town" feel with more urban options nearby. </p>
<p>Campus is drop-deat beautiful, as many have said. Neatly groomed, lots of trees, georgian-style red brick architecture, lots of wide open spaces.</p>
<p>Started with a DVD and Q&A session -- pretty standard. Some highlights from the talk --</p>
<p>*36% Greek, very active but not overwhelming</p>
<p>*70% Out of state, so it's not a suitcase school</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Before graduating, every student must either study abroad, complete an internship, engage in an undergraduate research project or complete some leadership training. Most students do more than just one. Study abroad and internships are particularly popular. Elon is on the 4-1-4 system, and I got the feeling that a lot of the study abroad occurred during the interterm (which to me is not really much of a study abroad experience, but that's my bias). The interterm is part of the annual tuition, so it's paid for -- but taking a course during interterm is optional.</p></li>
<li><p>Admissions is based 70% on academics and 30% "other" (essay, activities). Recommendations and SAT Subject Tests are not required. Like many schools, Elon will give students the benefit of the doubt on standardized tests and will mix and match scores from different sittings. But here's the odd part -- the Admissions rep said that they would ALSO mix and match the SAT and ACT, in other words looking at the Critical Reading portion of the SAT and the Math portion of the ACT, or the SAT Math and ACT Writing/English subscore. I don't think I've heard of this before.</p></li>
<li><p>The Admissions rep more or less danced around a question about ED's advantage in the app process and talked about EA versus RD instead. For what it's worth, the numbers show a big difference in ED acceptance rate (65%) versus overall acceptance rate (40%). ED is not very popular, though -- under 5% of applicants. The rep said that EA was the most popular option, and it did have a slightly higher acceptance rate than RD, but that was slightly misleading because it also had a more competitive applicant pool than either ED or RD.</p></li>
<li><p>Class size averages 22 and is capped at 33.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Highlights from the tour:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The new business building is almost complete and looks incredible from the outside. Should have all the bells and whistles (mock trading floor with real-time quotes, theatre for videoconferences, etc.). It will also have a Starbucks, which seemed the most important thing to our guide.</p></li>
<li><p>The communications building was very impressive. Several studio sets, lots of state of the art equipment, several editing rooms</p></li>
<li><p>The freshman dorm room we visited seemed slightly larger than most others I've seen, but maybe that's because it was empty due to it being summer. Not huge by any means, just slightly larger. Dorms appeared well maintained, clean. I think all the dorms are air conditioned, but don't hold me to that.</p></li>
<li><p>Fitness center was very nice, but couldn't see much due to some renovations.</p></li>
<li><p>Dining options were pretty good, and the Phoenix Card had a debit-card feature that was accepted at many of the area restaurants.</p></li>
<li><p>A nice touch -- every Tuesday morning there is a coffee/juice/bagels/etc. gathering around the main fountain for students and faculty. So it's an opportunity to mingle and catch up with people on a weekly basis. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Misc. musings -- Elon is actually a very good buy for the quality of school, about $26K tuition, board, room and fees. There merit aid, however, is good but not great. Most merit aid is through the Fellows program, which is $2K-4K annually (with the exception of Honors Fellows, which is $6K). There is a possiblity of "stacking" this with a Presidential Scholarship of $3750. So if a Fellow also gets a Presidential Scholarship (not a given), the merit aid would be in the $5750 -- $7750 range. Seemed a bit low to me. </p>
<p>That's it. Hope it helps.</p>