Marietta High School senior Alexis Cruz holds her Yale University welcome packet in April. She was accepted to the prestigious school March 28. (Photo Provided)

MARIETTA — Alexis Cruz will graduate from Marietta High School in May, and in late summer she will move to New Haven, Conn., to continue her studies at Yale University, where she plans to major in astrophysics.

“I first began to consider Yale for fun to be honest … I didn’t think I had a chance,” she said. “I had a chance to visit the campus over the summer. It was so pretty there, and I just fell in love with the campus; that is when I actually decided to apply.”

Cruz said her interests in math and space led her to astrophysics as her major.

“I’ve always loved math,” she said. “I also really like space, and I like how astrophysics is theoretical. It’s like solving a puzzle, and that’s really fun.”

Cruz said astrophysics is a branch of theoretical physics and there are a lot of branches of astrophysics as well.

Alexis Cruz portrayed Cinderella in Marietta High School’s 2022 production of the play of the same name opposite Jack Tindall as Prince Topher. (Photo Provided)

“You can get into planetary sciences,” she said. “What I am personally most interested in is cosmology, which is a study of the universe basically.”

Leading up to her senior year, Cruz has taken a number of advanced science and math classes.

“This year I’m in AP (advanced placement) calculus, which could count as college credit depending on the test at the end of the year,” she said. “Last year I took college statistics and AP physics, and this year I’m taking astronomy.”

Before settling on astrophysics, Cruz said a few other majors were explored.

“I considered majoring in mathematics for a while, but I settled pretty firmly into astrophysics,” she said. “For a minor, I am thinking about music on the side as well.”

Alexis Cruz poses for a photograph with Jack Tindall displaying the honors the Marietta High School cantabile choir received at the WorldStrides competition this spring in New York. (Photo Provided)

Cruz is involved in the choral music program and musical theater at Marietta.

“I have been involved in music at Marietta High School since I moved here about four years ago as a freshman,” she said. “It started with joining the choir because it was something I had done where I lived before; it just became a much bigger part of my life than I expected it to be.”

Cruz previously lived in Plano, Texas, and got involved with a choir while still in the fifth grade. She said she had been singing since she was 5 years old.

Cruz is a member of the Vocal Point a Cappella choir at Marietta.

“The contemporary group people are familiar with is Pentatonix,” she said. “We use the same sort of style where we don’t use any instruments; it’s just our voices. It’s really, really fun.”

Alexis Cruz is shown on her visit to Yale in the summer of 2023, which convinced her to apply to the school. (Photo Provided)

She was chosen as president in the choir program’s first elections.

In addition to choir, Cruz has been involved in some musical theater productions at the school. In fact she got the lead role after her first audition.

“My first where I got the lead, and don’t think anyone expected this, least of all me ,was ‘Cinderella,'” she said. “It was really fun, and it was definitely an interesting way to get involved in musical theater.”

She said the auditions were in October and the show was in late February or early March.

There were two more roles, Miss Honey in “Matilda” and the title character in “Anastasia.”

Alexis Cruz reads one of the “Percy Jackson” novels, her favorite series, at Muskingum Park in Marietta. (Photo Provided)

Miss Honey is very kind and very loving and deals with abuse from her aunt, Miss Trunchbull the headmistress of the school and the main villain of the play, Cruz said

“It was fun playing that character; it was very different from Cinderella but it was also very similar in some ways,” she said. “It is still like living under the thumb of an angry parental figure.”

For her senior year, Cruz had the role of Anastasia.

“Anastasia is the lost Russian duchess, Anastasia Romanov,” she said. “It is historical fiction based on the 1917 Russian Revolution but with a happier ending than real life had.”

In the story she has amnesia and is trying to learn who she is and falling in love with a boy named Dimitry.

Alexis Crus portrayed Ms. Honey in Marietta High School’s 2023 production of “Matilda.” (Photo Provided)

Cruz said she is looking forward to the musical offerings at Yale in addition to astrophysics.

“They have some really advanced music opportunities,” she said. “I got to attend an open rehearsal of their main choir, The Yale Glee Club.

“They were fantastic and it was so much fun to be there.”

Cruz said she thinks she will be at home there when it comes to a Cappella music.

“They have a very rich culture around a Cappella groups, which really surprised me at first,” she said. “They have 17 a Cappella groups on campus, so I definitely plan to join one.”

Jeffrey Saulton can be reached at jsaulton@newsandsentinel.com

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Alexis Cruz takes a photo with Scott Rieder, Marietta High School director of choirs, at an Ohio Music Education Association event. (Photo Provided)