My friend’s daughter got into Cornell without taking physics. She is not a stem major. She took honors biology, honor chemistry, honors forensics and honors pathology (both are half year classes) and 1 AP science which I think was AP chemistry. Forensics is definitely more popular than physics at our high school but stem kids take physics.
Basically you would be taking a risk not taking physics since there are schools where that can be a simple check off you didn’t meet and tons of other students did but it might not make a difference. You can talk to your guidance counselor to help determine if that is a risk to take with the schools you are thinking about.