My D got accepted to Elon last year and up until she heard from her dream reach school (GW), it was her first choose. She applied EA. At the time she did show that she was very much interested. She met multiple times with our local rep. At first they did not give any merit, but right around Decision time (mid april), they did give her some. That made her choice much harder, but in the end, for politics/IA had to choose GW. If GW had rejected her, she would definitely gone to Elon. At the time she got accepted EA to Elon, she had 28ACT and around an UW 3.5 GPA. But had tons of EC’s and volunteer work. So i think if under the EA process you show that you are truly interested, and its not a “safety school” , then you should get accepted if your stats/EC’s are good. Communicating with your Rep is a great start. For EA this year though, the decisions have probably already been made though.
BTW I think they sometimes defer, which might also skew the acceptance rates. Some of the EA’s that were not accepted were probably put in the RD pool and then accepted.