A state schoolgirl rejected by Cambridge University today vowed to win the Nobel prize for peace after achieving five As in her A-Levels.

Candice Clarke, 17, a pupil at Colchester County High School for Girls in Essex, grew up on a council estate and studied for her GCSEs while looking after her ill grandmother on her own.

Despite enormous success in her exams, she was ''devastated'' when she was rejected from Trinity College, as it had always been her dream to study at Cambridge.

''I was angry,'' she said. ''I deserved to go there and worked really hard.''

She was also turned down by Nottingham and Bristol but Newcastle University has given her a three-year bursary to help with the costs of her degree.

Candice's case bore similarities to that of Laura Spence, the comprehensive-educated girl from Gateshead who was rejected by Magdalen College, Oxford in 2000.

Chancellor Gordon Brown sparked a national debate about university elitism when he branded Oxford's decision a ''disgrace''. Laura, now at Harvard in the US, also wanted to read medicine.

Candice, who lives in Walton on the Naze, Essex, had already got eight As and one A-grade at GCSE.

Both of her parents are disabled and no one from her family has ever been to university.

''I always wanted to be a doctor,'' she said.

''The whole profession is very middle class and I think it needs a variety of people to communicate to patients on all levels.

''It has been emotionally draining, but it's a way of life - if you come from a dysfunctional family, you put up with it.''

She continued: ''Oxbridge should take more working class people from state schools, they should have a bigger range of people.''

Candice said the questions she was asked in her Cambridge interview were ''really easy''.

So she was particularly annoyed to discover when she went to look at Nottingham that another girl who only managed a C in AS-Level maths had been offered a place at Cambridge, whereas Candice already had an A in the subject.

''They obviously weren't interested in academic results.''

However, the rejection has not thwarted her determination. She pledged to become the second woman in history to win the Nobel peace prize. ''I don't want to be a normal doctor, I want to do something great,'' she said.

Other former pupils at the school brushed aside fresh accusations that standards were slipping to toast their high grades. There were screams of joy as a record 19 girls received five grade As, securing places at Oxbridge for 18 of them.

Every one of the 90 in the year group passed their A-Levels and almost 70% of all entries resulted in a grade A.

Headmistress Elizabeth Ward said she was ''absolutely thrilled for the students as it makes all of their work worthwhile''.

One student, Katherine Hambridge, 18, gained five grade As and has been awarded an Organ scholarship at Girton College, Cambridge, where she will study music.

She was also one of three girls at the school who have come in the top five of all candidates in the country who took general studies A-Level.

She said: ''I'm thrilled and having this piece of paper in my hand confirms what I have worked so hard for.''

She added that last year's marking fiasco made her feel that her grades weren't really in her hands.

''I was worried that they would be more strict because of the pressures on the exam boards. No one really knew how it would affect the overall grading system.''