Jessica Meeker is not your average MBA. She’s a black-clad, punk rock fanatic whose hair has seen more colors than the average rainbow.
She’s also 18, and on Saturday, she will be the youngest student ever to receive an MBA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, school officials said.
She’s not caught up in being a prodigy, though.
“It just feels so good to finally be done,” Meeker said Friday. “I have been in college for so long.”
At age 12, Meeker became the youngest student to enroll at Pennsylvania State University and, at 16, she was the youngest to earn a bachelor’s degree there, majoring in psychology.
Being a young teenager at a huge university wasn’t easy.
“I was a little kid,” she said. “Everyone was like, ‘What’s she doing here?”’
But Meeker eventually thrived, enjoying coffee shops and dorm life with her older peers.
Frank Meeker, 49, and Leigh Meeker, 46, always knew their daughter was smart — she could spell at 18 months. In first grade, after repeatedly complaining that she was bored, she was given an IQ test and scored in the 99.7 percentile, her mother said.
Meeker’s parents took her out of public school system and taught her at their home in Bellefonte, in the state’s center, about 10 miles north of Penn State’s main campus.
Leigh said she is proud of her daughter, though watching her grow up has been bittersweet.
“She’s going to get her own place and not be our little girl anymore,” Leigh said. “She’s an adult now, and she’s going to go out on her own.”
What next?
What Meeker will move on to, however, is an open question.
She said she’s considering getting a doctorate in psychology. She hasn’t received any job offers.
The director of the MBA program, Krish Krishnan, predicted Meeker would be successful at a company with younger management and an unorthodox style or at a firm that targets its products to teens.
“She knows her accounting, finance, marketing and business law,” Krishnan said. “And she has a mind-set and direct connect to those kind of businesses.”
Meeker joked that she would rather work someplace like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
“I’m addicted to sugar and Mountain Dew, and everyone tells me you should work in something you like,” she said.