@collegemom2000: regarding stats on academic vs. artistic denials - no one that I know if has tabulated this info. You could develop a rough idea by going back through the “Final Decisions Background” threads for several years and see who noted academic rejections, but I would say that something on the order of 90 percent of rejections are artistic. Some schools that are “most selective” academically, such as CMU, UCLA, and Michigan, apparently apply at least somewhat less selectivity (and in the case of CMU, apparently much less selectivity) to artistically-qualified MT applicants.
The following schools come to mind as listed as “academically rejected” in the Final Decisions threads (or elsewhere):
Northwestern University
UCLA
University of Miami - Florida
University of Michigan (you won’t get through the prescreen without meeting their minimum academic standards)
University of Southern California
American University
Emerson College
Florida State University
Illinois Wesleyan
Muhlenberg College
NYU/Steinhardt
NYU/Tisch
Texas Christian University
University of California - Irvine
James Madison University
Pennsylvania State University
Elon