As SoozieVT pointed out, all schools admit students that below the mean regardless of the major. NYU doesn’t have a lock on that and nor should anyone be surprised if students below the mean are admitted to NYU each year. Does that come as a surprise to anyone or should NYU brace itself for a stampede of applications underqualified academic applications now that the cat is out of the bag? The same happens at the top end. Plenty of students well above the mean are not admitted to colleges and universities all over the country.
Now in the auditioned drama world, the leap is to think people below the mean must have been admitted because of the strength of the audition. But you can’t know if that is actually the reason unless you are part of the admission committee. You can only guess (and it’s still just a guess) that was the reason if you know absolutely everything else about the student’s application which would include academic rigor of the classes they took in HS, test scores, essays, word for word content of the recommendations, the value of ECs, hooks both obvious and subtle, etc. That sort of insight into a specific application belongs only to the applicant themselves and possibly to the parents of the applicant if they review the entire application and test scores etc. first hand before hitting “send.”
@amtc since you are the one who brought it up again about NYU, even if you are speaking from direct experience with one or both of your own daughters applying to NYU, you have repeatedly told this forum and other forums that your daughters automatically would have gotten in to NYU because of who you are. So really, you can’t actually speak directly to the experience of most applicants when it comes to the NYU application process and how it might work for people without that hook. Fully agree that nobody could or should try to convince you otherwise about how things work at NYU. For the rest of the world, it is probably best to keep the “relaxing academic standards for good audition” claim in the proper context. The smart money is still on assuming what NYU says and publishes about their application process is in general how it works.