At NYU/Tisch, admissions is 50% academic and 50% artistic review (this is unlike a number of BFA in MT programs). These are separate processes.
As with ANY college, there is a common data set of the “stats” of accepted students to the college. Some accepted students are going to fall in the lower 10% of the accepted stats of admitted students. Not everyone who is admitted is solidly in the ballpark of the academic profile of the freshmen class. So, someone might know several students who are at the bottom of the accepted student academic profile for that particular college. The odds of being admitted, however, if one falls into the bottom percentile of accepted student “stats” for that college are definitely a lot longer.