<p>The most important thing is whether your guidance counselor will check off the “most rigorous curriculum taken” box. So you need to ask your GC if your senior year schedule meets that description, and whether that box will be checked.</p>
<p>I have heard the same info as BrownAlumParent about calculus. Here’s the thing – when Brown accepts just 8 out of 100 applicants, it can be very very picky. Are there students accepted who haven’t taken calculus? Absolutely. Are they recruited athletes or have celebrity/wealthy parents or written a best-selling novel – perhaps. Are they students who go to very rural or innercity schools where calculus is not offered – probably. </p>
<p>If your school offers calculus and you don’t take it --even if you plan to major in something like visual arts or Greek literature where calculus is not important – that is an obstacle to your admission. Have students been denied admission based on a decision like this? Actually, yes they have (I know of a valedictorian who didn’t get into Brown mainly because her senior year schedule was not competitive – no calculus or physics in her case.) OTOH, there are probably students accepted every year who took AP stats instead of calculus. This is not a statistic Brown provides.</p>
<p>Now, should you rearrange your life to take calculus, ONLY because you want to go to Brown? Well, obviously that’s a decision you (and other applicants) have to make. To be very honest – I wouldn’t do it. Just taking calculus doesn’t guarantee admission – thousands of kids who have taken calculus still don’t get into Brown. If you are not ready for calculus, if your senior year would be ruined by taking calculus, if your GPA and rank would drop if you took calculus – then I don’t see why you should take it on the 8% chance of getting into one school. </p>
<p>(PS – I much prefer the good-old days of Brown admissions, when acceptance rates were in the 20% range and students who didn’t take calculus were accepted.)</p>