Sobel, a junior at Bellarmine College Prep, spends his days in class and his nights practicing with a band, painting, creating films or acting in the school play. So when he received a call from YM Magazine, a national magazine based in New York City and aimed at teenage girls, he was a little confused. He soon discovered he'd been handpicked as one of 12 boys from the U.S. and Canada to compete in the Last Boy Standing contest, a year-long competition in which YM readers vote for their favorite guy each month and by December, the final contestant receives a $10,000 scholarship.

Sobel ended up in the magazine after Discovery Museum of San Jose Education Manager Linda Fischetti, who manages the museum's film department, called Sobel's mother, Judy, for permission to give his name to YM Magazine for a story it was doing about young filmmakers. They never heard back about the story. Instead the magazine called and informed Matt about the contest.

Each month, Sobel will be pictured in the magazine doing something different for the contest. In January, he was pictured in front of a painting he created with quick facts about his talents and interests. In February, the magazine asked him to write a love letter in honor of Valentine's Day.

He says that being featured in the magazine "is a little weird," and that everyone at his all-boys school knows about the contest. He even overhears people he doesn't know talking about it in the school hallways.

"When one of my friends told me he saw my picture in YM, I said 'The real question is, why are you reading a girls magazine?'" Sobel says, smiling. "And one of my teachers now calls me Mr. Delicious."

And the Sobel chatter has spread far beyond his high school corridors. Matt has received phone calls from girls in Massachusetts and New Jersey who saw his YM picture and searched for his phone number.

"One girl said she didn't expect me to be so nice," Sobel says. "She said, 'You like movies and I work in a video store!'"

Bellarmine teacher Tom Alessandri says he found out about Sobel's "honor" from his 15-year-old daughter, who reads the magazine. He says when word spread to Sobel's classmates about the magazine contest, he knew it wouldn't be long until the jokes began.

Yet Alessandri says that the contest doesn't do Sobel justice.

"This extraordinary young man is so much more than a 'pin-up boy,'" he says. "The whole process seems rather silly compared to the actual man he is becoming."

For more information about Matt Sobel and the Last Boy Standing contest, visit http://www.ym.com/lastboy.