@3mamagirls - the size of the town was a concern of my daughters as well. She was also interested in the College of Charleston mainly for the city itself and bowed out of a very secluded but really unique school in Sewanne (university of the south) because she could not see herself without shopping or entertainment within 40 miles.
However, it really has not been a problem at all for her now that she is at Elon. She rarely has the need to leave campus or the surrounding area and when she does the town of Burlington has a ton of stuff a short drive or shuttle ride away. You simply cut through a few residential neighborhoods and all of a sudden you have Target, Barnes & Nobles, Lowes, etc. There are restaurants and a full fledged Mall that has most of the staples. Enough students on campus have car that they seem to get around when they need to or take the shuttle.
It is not a hip area or a cool college town, so I don’t want to over sell it. But what you see as the town of Elon that feels so small is really only a small part of what is around the campus. And while it might be a bit harder to get to, Greensboro is only 25 minutes away and is a sizable city. That got my daughter comfortable enough in the end, but she has yet to even think about venturing that far. Everything seems to really happens within walking distance of campus.
As for the EA application I don’t want to discourage you from applying in that round. If you look at the numbers, of the 10,000 applications 66% of all application are EA and at a 50% EA acceptance, over half of your acceptances happen in the EA time-frame. So while the rate is lower than ED or in total, the number of acceptances is the highest of the three rounds.
And while I believe there are rejections at that point, my recollection is that many get deferred. You might have to research that a bit more or put that out as a question in CC, but I think it is less about them wanting to reject kids at that point and more about wanting to see what else comes along RD and who pulls their application after getting into their first choice ED or EA. So they seem to be more selective in who they say yes to EA.
Glad your daughter wants to spread her wing and experience something different from what she knows. I encourage my daughter to get away from Ohio and see a different part of the country. The nice thing about Elon is that you get the southern hospitality that NC is know for, but it is also a pretty diverse campus in terms of where students come from. New England is represented well, as is the rest if he eastern seaboard and the south.