NINE New College students have been offered places at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

Martin Daycock, 19, who has been offered a place at Oxford to study maths missed about three years of schooling and left with just two GCSEs.

"I never liked school. I found the lessons boring and repetitive and never felt very inspired," he said.

"I dropped out, even though you're not supposed to in Year Seven and then went to a special centre to help me re-integrate in Year Nine."

But Martin's opinion of school still hadn't changed and he left again.

"I had a home tutor but they only used to come to my house once a week so I did just two GCSEs in Maths and Biology."

Martin then decided to go to New College and despite only having taken two exams he was allowed to study A Levels to get to Oxford.

Liam Pomponi, 19, who also has an offer to study maths at Oxford, is the first to admit that he has never been a model student.

"Before I came to New College I was in the sixth form at St Joseph's and I was doing really badly.

"I was hanging around with the wrong crowd and didn't care about school.

"I was only getting Ds and Es in my work and used to skip classes all the time and mess around."

Liam decided to leave school behind to study A Levels in maths, further maths and physics.

No one else in Liam's family has ever been offered a place at any university let alone Oxford.

"After I left school I decided I wanted to turn things around and I just put my mind to it," he said.

"When I went to Oxford for my interview it was a bit weird, everyone else there had a string of A*s (GCSEs) and I was there with four As and Bs.

"But I was able to show them that I really thought about the subject and it wasn't just about grades."

Alisdair McDougall, 17, has an offer to study Engineering at Cambridge.

"I'm not sure if I want to specialise in civil or mechanical engineering yet so this course would give me more choice," he said.

"But I don't know if I do want to go there. I want to go somewhere fun and I'm looking at Southampton as well."

The other students who have received Oxbridge offers are: Henry Hung to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge, Michael Oxlade to study English at Oxford, Susannah Lock to study English Literature at Oxford, Michael Rhodes to study Chemistry at Oxford, Paul Silcock to study Engineering at Oxford and Ruth White to study Maths and Computer Science at Cambridge.

Principal Graham Taylor, said: "I am delighted that at least nine New College students have offers from Oxbridge this year.

"This is across a range of academic subjects, as well as the usual strong performance in Maths and Science, it is good to see our students going on to study the likes of English, Engineering and Computing at Oxbridge."

He added: "Last year we sent a total of 404 students to university, by far the highest in the region, and this will be even higher this year."

"Of course what the league tables don't show you is that our top 100 learners achieved an average points score of 416 at A Level and 26 students achieved four or more Grade As at A Level. This rivals any institution in the country, fee-paying or otherwise."

John Little, New College's Oxbridge co-ordinator, has supported the candidates throughout the process.

He said: "This maintains the College's long tradition of helping high flying students into top universities."