Yorkville High School valedictorian achieves perfection with one of district’s highest ever GPA

When it comes to Yorkville High School’s 2025 valedictorian, Tyler Plank’s academic record is no less than sterling.

In addition to helping the robotics team to their most successful campaign, Plank achieved one of the school’s highest ever G.P.A., with straight A’s throughout high school and dating back to grade school.

The recent graduate is bringing the Yorkville pride to University of Illinois, where he will study electrical engineering and computer science.

While calibrating his passion for engineering in the high school’s engineering and STEM courses, Plank said he realized how real-world problems can be mitigated through mathematics and computation.

“I want to create something important to have an impact on the world where I can help people by inventing something that makes their lives better,” Plank said, whose father is a veteran who served in Iraq.

“Something that always resonated with me is wanting to help people so problems are solved without them having to put their lives on the line. That impacts and drives me a lot,” Plank said.

Plank received one of the highest G.P.A’s to ever graduate from Yorkville High School, a 4.8276, which means he achieved perfect A’s in every class, including 12 advanced placement courses and 24 honors classes. He scored a 35 overall ACT score, demonstrating his mathematics skills with a perfect 36 on the math portion.

High school engineering teacher Brian Erjavec said it was a rewarding experience as one of the school’s robotics coaches to collaborate with Plank and see how he inspired the other students.

“Tyler is an amazing kid, he is academically brilliant, and did a great job of combining his natural talents with the ability to raise the people around him to help them succeed,” Erjavec said. “He was willing to work outside of class to get expertise in coding and the building he did for the robotics team, and ensured everything was organized.”

Erjavec said he loved hearing about Plank’s leadership positions around the school. He witnessed how Plank applied what he learned on the robotics team to becoming a leader on the math team and in courses like computer integrated manufacturing.

“Tyler would come in early before school every day,” Erjavec said. “I got to see him for three years, and as I matured as a robotics coach, I got to watch his growth with the program and becoming a leader.”

Plank said his passion for engineering developed because he loves being challenged to devise creative solutions to tricky problems.

“If I see a problem, I like to create as many solutions as possible and then narrow it down to one or two that work well,” Plank said. “I like having a set of rules you can follow and creatively being able to make things happen with them, especially by understanding how things work.”

Plank was a National Merit Scholar in 2024 and 2025, and was a member of seven honor societies. He was on the math team and participated in cross country all four years.

“Tyler is an amazing kid, he is academically brilliant, and did a great job of combining his natural talents with the ability to raise the people around him to help them succeed.”

—  Brian Erjavec, Yorkville High School engineering teacher

He credited his math coach Kellie Procopos, and the robotics coaches Erjavec and John Alaniz for inspiring him along the way and always taking the time to help him.

“My parents showed me early on how important school is and I’ve been working very hard,” Plank said. “There was a Project Lead the Way engineering course where I loved learning the engineering and mathematical aspects about bridges, electricity, and pneumatics.”

He said the robotics team gave him the opportunity to immerse himself in a world where developing strong communication skills and working together as a team proved vital to success.

“Robotics is all about teamwork, we are given a bunch of pieces of metal and electronics and had to build something to compete in games and perform tasks,” Plank said. “There’s a lot of programming involved with an autonomous phase where you don’t have any control. You have to find out ways to communicate well. It’s a lot of fun.”

Reflecting back on all the people who inspired him and played a pivotal role in his development, Plank laughed when it was suggested his success came down to “some attention to detail and careful programming.”