'US News' Features Somerville High School Grads in Best Colleges Issue

The 2013 U.S. News & World Report "Best Colleges" issue, which is scheduled to be on shelves Tuesday, features some local faces.

The popular issue of the magazine, which ranks colleges and universities, came to Somerville High School and profiled eight members of the class of 2012 for an article titled, "Success! How They Made It."

Unfortunately, the article is not available online (although the college rankings are), so you'll need to get your hands on a hard copy to see the profiles.

Somerville Public Schools got an early copy of the magazine and let Somerville Patch peek at the article.

"This spring, U.S. News visited Somerville High School near Boston to ask members of the Class of 2012 to talk about their journeys and pass on any helpful advice," the article says.

It describes our city as "home to a mix of blue-collar families, young professionals, college students and recent immigrants."

Here are the students the magazine profiled:

• Zachary Sciuto, a three-season athlete headed to Syracuse University
• Zoe Blickenderfer, class valedictorian, who's going to University of Pennsylvania
• Julia Zoukhri, a swimmer who's off to UMass Amherst
• Johnson Thomas, a Haitian-born basketball player going to Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I.
• Tania Ahmed, a science whiz and musician headed to Wellesley
• Norman Li, a musician and tennis player who's off to Boston College
• Wriju Adhikary, an immigrant from Nepal (she came when she was 7) who's going to Clark University
• Michael Kemp, a young man who, in sixth grade, was in a car accident that killed his mother and left him in a coma for two months and who will be going to Wentworth Institute of Technology

Susana Hernandez Morgan, a spokesperson for Somerville Public Schools, said the article is "fantastic" and a good representation of the student body at Somerville High School.

She said Tony Ciccarielllo, former headmaster at the high school, "deserves a lot of credit" for meeting with the magazine's writers and introducing them to the students they profiled.