Taking Calc for Penn application

[Nash09]

I am currently in the Army and planning to leave the military next year. (I did ROTC in undergrad and didn’t get accepted to any schools when I first applied in 2016, so had to go active duty.) I am currently planning to apply for the c/o 2027 after I finish my MS (Biology) and retake a few prereqs that I got below Cs in in undergrad.
I have to take an additional math class anyway in order to apply to my IS (MSU), so I am wondering if I should do something “easier” that will still fulfill the requirement (College Algebra or PreCalc) or if taking Calc would be worth it to also be able to apply to Penn?

My current science GPA isn’t very high, and my undergrad is a 3.03 if I remember correctly. However, I will be re-taking Biochem and both semesters of Physics, and am currently on track to have around a 3.9 graduate GPA.

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[EB73674]

I am currently in the Army and planning to leave the military next year. (I did ROTC in undergrad and didn’t get accepted to any schools when I first applied in 2016, so had to go active duty.) I am currently planning to apply for the c/o 2027 after I finish my MS (Biology) and retake a few prereqs that I got below Cs in in undergrad.
I have to take an additional math class anyway in order to apply to my IS (MSU), so I am wondering if I should do something “easier” that will still fulfill the requirement (College Algebra or PreCalc) or if taking Calc would be worth it to also be able to apply to Penn?

My current science GPA isn’t very high, and my undergrad is a 3.03 if I remember correctly. However, I will be re-taking Biochem and both semesters of Physics, and am currently on track to have around a 3.9 graduate GPA.

You should take the class you think you'll be most likely to do well in. If you think you'll do well in calc and it won't be too much on your plate, then you could certainly take it. If you think calc would be a stretch, either the material itself or when combined with other courses, then I would dial it back & make sure to pick a class you'll be able to do well in. I'm personally taking College Algebra at the moment to fulfill a requirement for University of Minnesota, and it's certainly not any cakewalk, even though I did pretty well on the quantitative GRE and took calculus in undergrad at one point (granted, it was 13 years ago). You should always have the goal, especially with a low GPA, to make sure you can truly handle your courseload. It does nothing to have a poor or mediocre grade in a more difficult class, vs. a very strong grade in an acceptable-but-possibly-lower-difficulty one.