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Following The Footsteps Of Many World Leaders, Malala Yousafzai Is Going To Oxford

Congrats, Malala!
Malala Yousafzai signs a guest book at Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
AFP/Getty Images
Malala Yousafzai signs a guest book at Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Prize winning activist who narrowly avoided death after being shot by the Taliban, had a dream for a while now. In March, she told the teachers at the Association of School and College Lecturers annual conference in UK that she wants to study at a British university.

She had applied to many colleges to study PPE for the next three years. And she was focusing to get all As.

Her dream has come true.

Yousafzai announced on Twitter this morning that she's going to Oxford University to study. "So excited to go to Oxford!!" she tweeted.

She's going to study philosophy, politics, and economics.

Yes, Yousafzai has a resume that includes being the youngest person to win a Nobel Peace Prize. But that didn't make her any less anxious about the admissions process.

"People often forget that winning a Nobel Peace Prize doesn't mean that you know much in your studies," she told Refinery29 earlier this year.

Oxford university had extended a conditional offer to Yousafzai last spring, but she had to pass her A-Level exams at the end of the school year to make it official. The results came out today.

Yousafzai would be juggling her studies with running the Malala Fund, an international charity which advocates for all girls to have access to 12 years of education.

Earlier, Yousafzai had said that the interview at Oxford was the 'hardest' one in her life. "I just get scared when I think of the interview," she had said.

Yousafzai has lived in Birmingham since 2012, where she was treated after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban.

Since her tweet about the Oxford news, her timeline has been filled with congratulatory messages.

Someone even asked her for a 'treat'.

Malala pls treat

— king of the castle (@Eustacebaaaang) August 17, 2017

But then there are trolls too.

RIP Oxford.

— Engr. Sadam Khan (@sadamengr) August 17, 2017

The 19-year-old had emerged as an anonymous advocate for girls' education at the age of just 11, when she blogged for BBC Urdu about living in Pakistan's Swat Valley under Taliban rule in 2009. Going to Oxford is just the latest in her long list of achievements.

Yousafzai is the latest to join the long list of world leaders who studied at Oxford including former Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott, former British Prime Ministers Clement Attlee and Tony Blair, Dame Josephine Barnes, first female President of the British Medical Association, inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and former Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.