Almost 30 years ago, a teenage Ted Cruz planned a route to the Oval Office.

Next to a goofy portrait of a smiling high school senior in a 1987 listing of scholarship, a 17-year-old Cruz laid it out: he would graduate from Houston's Second Baptist high school and go to Princeton to study politics and economics, then go to Harvard to study law. He would work in private practice, then run for public office and "eventually achieve a strong enough reputation and track record to run for – and win – President of the United States."

So far, it all has gone according to plan. Strikingly so.

Cruz graduated from Second Baptist and went to Princeton. Then he went to Harvard Law School and eventually into private practice before winning his first public office, a Texas seat in the U.S. Senate, in 2012. Now, he's running for the Republican nomination for president.

"That's just absolutely fascinating," said Nancy Beck Young, a professor of presidential history at the University of Houston, adding that no U.S. President declared such explicit intentions at such a young age. "It's on a different plane."

The specificity of Cruz's youthful ambitions could bolster critics' accusations that the junior senator from Texas has been plotting a presidential run from the day he took his seat in the Capitol, if not before.

But it comes as no surprise to the folks who knew him in high school, when he was touring the state reciting the U.S. Constitution from memory. His peers recalled a young man with such uncanny tenacity that it was alienating at times.

In his 2015 autobiography, Cruz described his adolescent self as an "unpopular nerd" who aspired to learn computer science. Then in high school he was elected class president; he became more popular and found interest in debate.

His political ambitions took root in 10th grade with his involvement in the Free Enterprise Institute, a group founded by a Houston businessman and motivational speaker to promote free market values and constitutional conservatism.

Cruz joined an elite group of students dubbed the Constitutional Corroborators, who traveled that state speaking at business clubs and using mnemonic techniques to reproduce entire articles of the Constitution onstage with giant notepads.

In 1987, the five-student group went on a Spring Break bus tour across East Texas. Among them was Laura Calaway, now a mother of two in Montrose. Cruz, she said, stood out.

"He was weirdly focused. Debate, the Constitution; all that stuff was really important to him," she said. "He wasn't able to be a real part of the group dynamic. He didn't know how to be with teenagers."

Halfway through his junior year, Cruz moved to Second Baptist School, a posh 42-acre campus in Houston's affluent west side, with covered red brick walkways and edifices. He spent all three semesters there in Elsa Jean Looser's English class.

"He had tremendous political aspirations and was very open about that," said Looser, now 76.

She called him a "dream student," always questioning attentively and driving class discussions. Though he never specified to her that he hoped to be president, everyone knew he was bound for high places.

By his senior year, Cruz was at the top of his class. He had been class president twice, and he helped write the student body constitution. He was captain of the speech team, president of the drama club, and on the roll of the school's newspaper, yearbook, key club and magazine. And he put down in writing that he wanted the White House.

"It shows that he's been on a missionary path to be president since he was a teenager," said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of political history and fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. "He's a man on a mission."

A child's wish to be president seems old fashioned and cliche, often stated, seldom done.

Young rattled off the presidents, back to Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, along with each man's start in politics. Some were born to political families and some showed political promise at a young age. Most got involved in their 30s or later. None put in writing at age 17 that he was aimed at the Oval Office.

Cruz could be the first. On most national polls, he ranks second for the Republican presidential nomination.

"Just goes to show you the importance of setting goals and working hard to achieve them," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said.