Look, beyond Uni, lots of things become more important than A Levels or alongside A levels. Firms use different strategies when choosing who to short list etc.
But the OP is asking about the impact of A Levels on uni entry. And at the point of uni entry, predicted or actual A Level grades, and the subjects they are in are the most important info in most offer/decline decisions. The vast majority don’t interview, many don’t read the PS and whether it’s right or not right, some courses are very oversubscribed at some places and have to use pretty brutal and blunt instruments to reduce the number of applicants down.
Loads of people will get onto an engineering degree without FM. Loads of people will get brilliant jobs. They are the vast majority. But quite simply, this is about having access to ALL of the courses, including those at the very top universities which are able to be extremely picky about who they take. Serious candidates who are thinking about these courses want to give themselves the best chance of an offer. And quite simply, one hurdle at which they can fall is a lack of FM, esp if their school did offer it.
Fair enough if a 15 year old choosing GCSE options was a whizz at Maths but not sure if they wanted to do engineering or maybe English and so did Maths without FM and English Lit instead. As long as they had been told that they were capable of FM and that certain courses wouldn’t offer them a place on the basis of a lack of FM, that’s fine and they have a choice to make.
The trouble is when students aren’t told they are capable of FM and the closed doors through not doing it. I would think that the vast vast majority who do engineering at the very top selective unis which do want FM are very mathematically inclined. Whizzes at Maths aren’t usually satisfied with just Maths, but want FM too…even if they do like other subjects. So in actual fact, the vast vast majority of students who really are the calibre wanted by these places, naturally choose to do FM if it is offered. But it needs to be recognised that some students might be gifted mathematicians but in schools or colleges where this is extremely unusual and there is no history of sending students to elite institutions. Often these students don’t have access to the kind of advice and easily available information that other students elsewhere might have. They might be encouraged towards a subject instead of FM, because it will be cheaper for the school to run, or more likely, simply because no-one thinks to point out to the student they don’t know, that not doing FM might close doors.
If universities are all about broadening access and increasing participation, schools and colleges have to play their part too. They have to ensure that students understand the requirements of different courses before they choose their A Levels. Universities don’t make FM a requirement if a college or school don’t offer it - this is an attempt to broaden access, even though teaching a cohort without FM might be quite different to teaching those with it. It’s fair enough though to say that if it was available, students are expected to have taken it, in the same way you couldn’t expect to be taken onto lots of courses without the key subject.
What is the real shame is that the most competitive courses at the most elite institutions remain dominated by students from selective schools and that the very able students from some non-selective schools and backgrounds which get flagged by UCAS still don’t get offers, when they could have if they’d had the right advice. Student A from a school which gave all the right advice who is a good but not brilliant student and who has A star predictions in Maths, FM and Physics, with A in in Chemistry gets the offer, whilst genuinely brilliant Student B who has A star predictions in Maths, Physics and Sociology doesn’t.