STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Jess Meeker had an easy enough time with her college education, earning a B average at Penn State University and admission to graduate school. But her driver's license - that's a different story.

When Meeker accepts her diploma on Saturday, the 16-year-old prodigy will be the youngest student ever to earn a bachelor's degree from Penn State. But professors who had her in class, and the administrators who accepted her into graduate school, say Meeker is anything but a child.

"We loved having her in the class," said Mo Stroemel, assistant professor of theater, who had Meeker in three different theater courses. "I got only good comments back from all the areas that she worked in.

"I think Jessica has such a good head on her shoulders that I don't think anyone skipped a beat, on her end or on our end. She wasn't treated specially, and I don't think anyone thought of her any differently than any of the other students in the class. She's a pretty levelheaded kid."

Meeker's parents knew early on that she was advanced for her age, her father, Floyd Meeker, said. They had to stop spelling out words when the 18-month-old Jess figured out that "p-l-a-y-h-o-u-s-e" meant she was getting a playhouse as a gift.

"In first grade, she would come home from school crying because she was bored," Floyd Meeker said.

That's when her parents started home schooling her, moving through grades in as little as three months. They expected Meeker to finish her high school curriculum by age 13, but she picked up the pace in order to graduate in the Class of 2000.

That fall, Meeker enrolled at Penn State two months before her 13th birthday. She planned to study pre-med, but switched to psychology when she learned that medical school would mean cutting up cadavers.

Now, Meeker is focussed on business school. She is taking an accounting class this summer and in the fall will enroll at Indiana (Pa.) University, where she'll pursue a master's in business administration.

"I want to take over the world," Meeker said, although she said she'd settle for being chief executive officer of Hot Topic, a mall-based chain of retail stores that caters to teens.

"They have the coolest clothes," said Meeker, who goes for a Goth look.

It will be Meeker's first time living away from home; her family lives in Bellefonte, just 10 miles from Penn State's campus. But IUP is 75 miles away, a tougher drive - especially if Meeker can't get her driver's license.

"Parallel parking is just impossible," she said. "I just haven't gotten the hang of that yet."

Joseph Renzulli, director of the University of Connecticut's National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, said the transition from college to graduate school should be easier than going into college as a 12-year-old. Meeker already has experience in a campus setting, and although she'll still be younger than her peers the difference will be less pronounced.

But he said an 18-year-old with an MBA might find it hard to convince potential employers that she's as capable as older graduates.

"The first judgment that we make about a person is how they appear physically, and there are some people who can get in the door just because of their presence. It's a shame," Renzulli said. "But as the years go by, in a few years, you won't be able to tell if she's 20 or 28."

And officials at IUP's Eberly College of Business and Information Technology had no concerns about Meeker, who had good grades, high test scores and strong references.

"You know how some people are so smart that they don't have any sense? Not her," Karen Davis, secretary for the MBA program at IUP. She seems really balanced, and I was very impressed with the way her parents had raised her."