I’m not defending Princeton, but you don’t get a Bachelors without the General Requirements. The author of this piece was probably looking at her courses on her major...she may have just gone there after getting her General Requirements out of the way.
In their general requirements they list Quantitative Reasoning (i.e. math) and Science and the number required in each field for a bachelors.
http://www.princeton.edu/ua/sections/11/
Though I believe Princeton’s Mathematics department is first rate.
It’s likely that Ms. Shields (and many other Princeton and other Ivy League undergraduates) fulfilled many of their distribution requirements with AP credits or college credits otherwise earned in high school.
The courses listed on my daughter’s Mount Holyoke transcript shows no evidence of the college’s language, freshman comp or math requirements — she took enough college level Russian, a college level writing course and AP calc (getting a high enough score on the AP exam) while in high school to fulfill them before she was even admitted.
OK. Thanks.