Will I still be able to get into a business/ CS major if I take Calc AB in 12th grade?

Answered

For top business schools, taking AP Calc in 12th grade vs those who take it 11th and finish up with AP Calc B/C or multivariable Calc, DOES not matter.

Why? Out of the 22 offered undergraduate Wharton concentrations which are similar to other programs like NYUs Stern majors, only 3 or 4 of them will require any knowledge of calculus: Finance, Statistics, Business analytics perhaps, Operations research perhaps.

Most finance majors will not take a course in pricing models until junior or senior year, by that I'm certain that most of them who took AP Calc will be rusty and have forgotten how to apply calculus formulae. Calculus is using primarily to price derivatives like options in finance. There are literally dozens of different option pricing models and they all use some form of basic and advance maths to master. So it's entirely possible that prior to enrolling in these Capital Markets classes that teach how to use the Heath Jarrow Morton Model or the Hull White Model, or taking a programming class to learn how to build your own pricing model, you will have to take a math course at UPenn's math department in Martingales, or Stochastic Processes or Real Analysis or something that is entirely not covered in HS. Therefore, I recommend to you and any other HS student applying to Business School, not to worry about this and cross that bridge until when you get into business school and figure out even if you want to pursue a major that requires heavy maths or not. So if you know already you want to be a Quant trader or design risk management systems, then you know the more math the better. However 99% of Business majors chose something else like Accounting or Marketing or Health Care Management or Real Estate. And in the Finance Major - there are many kinds of Finance jobs: Corporate Finance, Personal Finance, Investment Banking, Certified Financial Planner, Financial analytics, Quantitative jobs like software developer, trader, derivatives marketer, risk management, back office trade management etc etc. Many finance jobs do not use Calculus whatsoever. If you asked Jaime Dimon CEO of JPM CHASE to price a 90 Call Option in his head on JPMChase stock at the money within 1% or tell you what the ATM strike volatility is within 5%, could he do that? I doubt it. But my dad said off the top of his head it was 3.00%. I looked up the option chain on Yahoo finance and it last traded at 2.91% . So I said how do you know this. He said I traded derivatives before you were born and 90 day ATM strike call options were always around 300 basis points. So you don't need to know calculus to trade options, you just have to know how to read the screens and have a feel for the market.

Hope that helps.

Good luck.