<p>Re: VCU–Not to belabor the point, but VCU hasn’t been an academic safety school for several years now, and as an auditioned program–in fact, you audition for initial acceptance and then again after two years for the acting program–it’s certainly not a safety theater school. I’m in Virginia too, teaching at a selective and fairly rigorous independent school, and we send kids with quite good academic records to VCU–it is by no means the easy admit that it was even 10 years ago. However, I don’t know how they weigh academics and auditions. I have been told that JMU is 50/50–that the department tells the admissions office who they want based on auditions, but the applicants still must meet general admissions standards. Does anyone know whether, as a state university, VCU follows the same protocol?</p>