How greatly does a C impact me? How can I justify that C?

Answered

First of all don't freak out about pre-calc. For some it's super hard so it's no surprise that if you had other mitigating factors in your life, it was hard to keep up with the workload and master the subject. There are many people that didn't get their best grades in either Algebra2 or Pre-calc. But there is always a way to show AOs that you are good at math.

What you need to focus on now is not the past nor make excuses for the past nor rely on the optional additional essay to explain this grade. Why, too many applicants suffered from one thing or the other during the pandemic and relied on these essays but I think unless you went homeless or lost your parents in a plane crash, you can't get pass for every day tragedies. Millions of HS students had mental breakdown, many suffered from COVID-19 itself, and there was death and doom and gloom globally. But other people used this bleak moment to find their groove and spike activities despite the world collapsing around them.

What will be the most impactful thing for your mathematics narrative going forward is whether or not you will bounce back and get an A in AP Calc AB/BC or any other higher maths. If you can do that, your B in Pre-Calc is just a blip. But if you throw in the towel and not move forward in math, then the B looks like your turning point in your math career. So what AOs want to see is someone moving past a slight failure and grinding and mastering the material in a more difficult class.

Here's a true life story, I didn't do well in Algebra 2. I got a B+, an 89.5. 90 is an A- in my school and a pleaded for that .5 point but nope I had to accept the first B on my K-12 transcript. I knew that I had to perform better at Pre-Calc so I worked real hard an got an A-. But in the 2nd semester our school went Pass/Fail so I couldn't show my future AOs that I really improved in math. How would anyone know whether I got an A or B 2nd term or even a C. Therefore in the summer after Jr. year I looked for an online Calculus course from an accredited University that I could focus on during the summer because I didn't want to mess up my senior year with the stress of AP Calc. I enrolled in Outlier.org and they had a 7 week intensive college calculus course which was equivalent to UPitt's Math 6210 or something like that. I got a 95 and 3 college credits and a UPitt transcript. I felt the teaching was superior to HS math teachers and all the material was self paced. There were multiple proctored tests but they were all fair and covered only the material in the course, no random questions. I highly recommend doing this.

Fast forward, I didn't have to take another math course in HS and got into top Ivy. And no one ever asked me a question about taking a different path except that Columbia wanted a copy of the transcript from UPitt so it would be counted toward my graduation credits if that makes sense.

Good luck.