My daughter will be applying to universities this year. Some of the people we have spoken with have said that in order to apply to a US university one would have to take math and science in grade 12 as well. Is that the case? My daughter is thinking of applying to Mount Holyoke, Franklin and Marshall and Drexel University.
Most colleges have very few strict requirements for admission because they like options for special cases. However most have recommendations. I would treat the recommendations as requirements. They can be found in each school’s Common Data Set. Just google “ common data set”. Here is an example from Mount Holyoke.
The rules are different for international students, as US colleges know that the ‘typical’ expectations vary across systems. The recommendations are designed for domestic students, not international students. A student from the UK, for example, would not be able to fulfill the ‘recommended’ table above- but they are regularly accepted to US unis. S
As @hippobirdy there are a few limits, but they tend to be obvious: a student applying for, say, CS who hasn’t taken maths in the final year could be problematic.
You can google the common data set of any college (google “college data set XYZ University”) and look at Section C5 for that school’s required/recommended HS coursework.
That said, the competitive colleges have lots of applicants with 4 years of study in all academic subjects.
I agree with @collegemom3717 that requirements for international students can vary depending on the countries they are from. That’s why colleges publish recommendations (e.g. in common data set), but not requirements.