<p>If I had to guess, being at the point where one could take calc and not doing so would disadvantage an applicant in the “most rigorous schedule possible” area. Especially coming from the sort of school you do, I doubt it would disqualify you on its own - to give you a sense of my perspective, I attended a rigorous New England boarding school too - I was accepted with 2 years of history and with no chemistry, which one would think would be important in the rigor category. On the other hand, the rest of my schedule was intensive and rigorous with strong grades, including 7 years of foreign language and math through and beyond Differential Equations. Generally, adcoms seem to expect different things from New England boarding school candidates and similar schools than they do from the average high school. I know at least one person who got into Harvard from my school having stopped math without trig or ever knowing what a logarithm is, but he was also the founder and runner of a major political website.</p>
<p>I’m not sure their motives are that sinister, but ultimately, they are guiding you in a way that makes their admit numbers and the school’s numbers look best. Sometimes they discourage students from applying places they actually have a chance because they feel the chance isn’t high enough to warrant the school’s numbers absorbing a rejection. I was pressured to affirm my status on the waitlist at Princeton (presumably) because it’s a more prestigious school than Brown, even when I had “settled” on Brown. Based on the fluctuating numbers from my school, I’m disinclined to believe that adcoms do things like lead students astray to help other students, because it’s pretty clear that there are no hard caps on students accepted.</p>
<p>Do I recommend taking calc in high school? Yes. Am I biased? As a math major, certainly. Can you get in without calc? It’s been done. Will it disadvantage you? It wouldn’t surprise me, but Stats is better than no math.</p>