Marietta Native Named Rhodes Scholar

 Matt Pearl

There are few honors as prestigious as the Rhodes Scholarship, which gives students a free ride for two years at the University of Oxford in England. Only 32 people get chosen for it every year; this year, one of those people is from Marietta.

Grace Tiao, 23, found out she received the honor late Saturday night.

"I feel like I'm just looking forward," Tiao said. "I feel like it's just an incredible gift of time, really."

Tiao graduated in 2004 from Marietta's Wheeler High School; she received a perfect 1600 on her SATs and spent her undergraduate years at Harvard.

After that, she found herself like most college grads her age -- looking for a job.

But she quickly took care of that by setting her sights on her dream location: Antarctica.

"My life-long dream was to go to Antarctica," Tiao said. "I went to the web site for the National Science Foundation and looked up anyone who had a grant to go over there."

She wound up as part of a group that spent three months in Antarctica, studying the biology of one of the earth's most unexplored areas. She spent the next nine months doing research in New Zealand.

And next year, she'll be off to London, thanks to the Rhodes Scholarship.