Five girls from The Mount School, York, are celebrating a flying start to 2009.

The high-flying schoolgirls have beaten off stiff competition from the brightest students in the country to gain university offers from Oxford and Cambridge.

Hannah Lee has been accepted to study history at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and Olivia Hanson will study English at Jesus College, Oxford. Successful Cambridge entrants include Eleanor Grierson, who will study architecture at Girton College, Jane Lin who will study chemical engineering at Newnham College, and Sophie Reed, who has been accepted to Murray Edwards College to read natural sciences.

Julie Lodrick, incoming principal of The Mount School, the only all-girls’ Quaker senior boarding school in the UK, said: “We are delighted for the girls in achieving such impressive results in such a highly competitive process.

“The girls’ success in such a wide range of subjects helps to quash the traditional stereotype that girls don’t achieve in such fields as sciences and maths.

“Our girls excel in all subjects and have the chance to explore their own strengths and ambitions without any restraints.”