The new A* grades were gleefully targeted by hundreds of West students.

But perhaps the top performer was Sunoo Park, from Long Ashton in North Somerset, who notched up six of them.

The 18-year-old Bristol Grammar School student received A*s for her entries in computing, maths, further maths, physics, Russian and Spanish, and will be heading to Trinity College, Cambridge, next month to read computer science.

Other students who are already showing top-level sporting prowess have matched it with academic success. Pole vaulter Cameron Walker-Shepherd is preparing to take up a scholarship in the US after picking up his exam results at St Brendan's Sixth Form College in Bristol.

Cameron, 18, from Fishponds, will fly to New Jersey next week to start a course at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Charlotte Davies, 19, from Weston-super-Mare, who is officially seeded UK women's number one for dry and indoor snow slopes skiing, passed A-levels at Weston College in biology, psychology and PE.

Wells Cathedral School student Emily Day, from Westbury-sub-Mendip, achieved four grade A*s and will read Natural Sciences at Cambridge. And Katherine Jarman, a fellow Wells Cathdral School pupil, also achieved four grade A*s and will read Natural Sciences at Murray Edwards College.

Dozens of pupils at Pate's Grammar School in Cheltenham are destined for either Oxford or Cambridge after the school achieved a 100 per cent pass rate.

Matthew Beckett, 18, passed with an A* and two As, and is planning to study philosophy at Cardiff. He said: "The head teacher at my last school said I wouldn't get the grades I needed if I left, but I proved her wrong."

In the Cotswolds, one in seven of 100 candidates at the Cotswold School, in Bourton- on-the-Water, gained at least one A* grade in the school's best results yet.

Hundreds of students across the Bath area were celebrating achieving the new A* grade at A-level today.

At Bath's Ralph Allen School, the number of A* passes was 10 per cent, with staff describing the achievement as "fantastic".

At St Laurence School in Bradford on Avon more than a quarter of all exams results was either an A or A* grade.

Four students are now heading off to Oxford or Cambridge.