Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize when she was 17, said on Thursday she was "excited" after winning a place to study at Oxford University.

Yousafzai said she had been accepted at Oxford to study Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. She joined thousands of other students in Britain in discovering where they will go to university after getting their final school results.

Others to have studied the same course at Oxford, one of the world's top universities, include former British Prime Minister David Cameron and late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Yousafzai, now 20, came to prominence when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head in 2012, after she was targeted for her campaign against efforts by the Taliban to deny women education. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

"So excited to go to Oxford!! Well done to all A-level students - the hardest year. Best wishes for life ahead!" she said in a tweet. A-levels are final year exams for school students.

After recovering from the Taliban attack, she has attended school in England.

Early figures showed a fall in the number of places allocated by universities, although the proportion of students scoring top grades rose.

University admissions service UCAS said on its website the decrease in the number of university acceptances had been driven by a fall in acceptances from older students and fewer students from the European Union.

UCAS said 416,310 people had been accepted to degree courses on A-level results day, down two percent compared to 2016. But over 1 in 4 of the grades was an A or A*, the best ratings, up 0.5 percentage points on last year.