You can use the properties of time acceleration to acsend to ELITE status very fast, once you get foto or bombing missions. Just buy a Panther with lots of shields, get yourself an imperial foto or bombing mission and stop about 10 km above the target station. Next destroy all ships in your near. You can use your turrets and the zero time shooting feature to achieve this. Now you can select the first level of time acceleration. The ships that now start from the station fly directly into your shields and are destroyed. The only thing you have to watch very carefully is your height above the planet. You can expect a ``right on commander'' message every 7 to 10 minutes. These messages reset time acceleration, so you will have to destroy all ships in your near again and select time acceleration until the next message comes up. After a few hours of work you will have advanced to ELITE status.
You can not use higher time acceleration levels because then the destroyed interceptors are not counted.