Adding to this... I knew many med-school candidates whose biggest hurdle with MCAT were physics and (to a somewhat lesser extent) chemistry requirements. Now, the way you learn physics is either you memorize a huge amount of rules and equations (which is exhausting and takes forever), or you learn only a few basic intuitive principles (say Newton's laws when it comes to mechanics or Maxwell's equations when it comes to electromagnetism), and then apply algebra, calculus, and trigonometry to extend those basic principles to the problem at hand. Chemistry requires more rote memorization than physics, but even there knowing how to balance chemical equations reduces to knowing basic algebra. Taken to the extreme, I learned first-hand that it is possible to pass college-level physics with flying colors with little or no studying, but it requires being good at math.

TL;DR A huge amount of college-level material, from economics to physics to chemistry depends on working knowledge of algebra.